Social status and health: absolute deprivation or relative comparison, or both?

Abstract

While conceptualizing status hierarchies represents a challenge to social theorists, the task is doubly difficult for health researchers exploring status and health inequalities. Are the status hierarchies most strongly related to health adequately assessed by socio-economic status, for example, income and educational attainment? Do the various status hierarchies have conceptually and empirically distinct relationships with one another and health? To what degree does standing in objective status hierarchies, influence health above and beyond perceptions of relative standing, and vice versa? This article utilizes original survey data from the Canadian province of British Columbia to test the applicability of the materialist explanation (focused on absolute deprivation and objective status hierarchies), and the psychosocial explanation (focused on perceptions of relative comparison), for relationships between social status and health.

Key Words:

• Sociology
• socioeconomic status
• absolute deprivation
• relative comparison
• selfrated job status
• self-assessed social class