Household Types and Social Standing

This paper reports an investigation of the clues which are important in making status evaluations. We take the family as the principal unit in the stratification system and thus the unit which is evaluated. Different types of families are described by their members' occupations, educations, and ages; and by marital status, number of children, and sex. The social standings of 36,000 hypothetical vignette families are evaluated. These evaluations are regressed on household characteristics to determine which clues are important in the attribution of status. We find that occupation is more important than is education, age, or marital status. A number of characteristics are not important in this regard. Finally, we find that each member contributes differentially to the overall evaluation of the family, the relative contribution of each being partially a function of the type of family being evaluated.