What is Socioeconomic Status (SES)?
Farley (2005:32) notes that nearly all societies tend to group themselves by socioeconomic status. SES is a concept which is rather complex. The average citizen may tend to group people according to simple criteria like income or wealth. SES is a more robust concept. Socioeconomic status (SES) calls attention the complex nature of social class. It is determined by an array of social and economic indicators. It is also subject to interpretation form various social perspectives. 1. Objective Measures There are objective measures of social class. Henslin (1999:253) suggests that researches can assign people to various social classes based objective criteria involving wealth, power, and prestige. Some objective indicators can include occupation, educational level, number of dependents, type of residence, infant mortality, and life expectancy rates. 2. Subjective Measures There are also subjective measures. Typically, determining class from a subjective point of view involves asking someone
