Two Latent Groups Influencing Subjective Social Status: Middle Class Tendency and Clear Class Consciousness

Naoki Sudo ()
Additional contact information
Naoki Sudo: Hitotsubashi University

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2021, vol. 158, issue 3, No 9, 1045-1064

Abstract: Abstract Previous studies clarified that many individuals tend to attribute themselves into the middle-class, explaining this tendency by referring to group reference theory. This article aims to explore the formation of subjective social status from a different point of view. To do so, the author analyzed the data from the Stratification and Social Psychology Interview Survey in 2010 (SSP-I 2010) and the Stratification and Social Psychology Survey in 2015 (SSP 2015), which were conducted in Japan. The results of the analyses reveal that the population can be categorized into two latent groups: one demonstrates a middle-class tendency in distributions of subjective social status, and the other demonstrates a clear class consciousness. The former group was composed of wealthy individuals, and the latter group was composed of not-wealthy individuals. Furthermore, the results also clarified that the composition rates of the two latent groups had been stable from 2010 (a period of economic stagnation) to 2015 (a period of economic boom), irrespective of socio-economic changes. Finally, the author discusses the implications of these findings.

Keywords: Subjective social status; Middle-class tendency; Class consciousness; Social inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11205-021-02731-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:soinre:v:158:y:2021:i:3:d:10.1007_s11205-021-02731-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11205-021-02731-6

Access Statistics for this article

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement is currently edited by Filomena Maggino

More articles in Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().