Description:

"Exploring Social Class Identity in Childhood and Adolescence: What, How, and Why?"

Abstract:
Socioeconomic status (SES) and social class are complex constructs that capture individuals’ position in the social hierarchy (Diemer, Mistry, et al., 2013). Although developmental science has an extended and rich tradition of examining associations between SES, broadly, and poverty, more specifically, and children and adolescents’ physical health, psychological well-being, and educational outcomes (Duncan, Magnuson, & Votruba-Drzal, 2015), far less is known about how children and adolescents make meaning of these constructs or how they relate to and inform their educational outcomes and psychological experiences (see, Mistry, Brown, White, Chow, & Gillen-O’Neel, 2015; Odgers, 2015 for exceptions). To begin to address this gap, in this talk, I will discuss recent findings pertaining to children and adolescents’ reasoning about and experiences of social class and implications for their identity development, intergroup attitudes, social relations (i.e., experiences of discrimination, ‘fitting in’), and educational outcomes.