Class Identification in the United States

Data derived from a national sample survey reveal that education, main earner's occupation, and family income have independent effects upon class identification. Multiple regresion analyses reveal that ownership of stocks and bonds in private companies, savings bonds, and rental property makes no significant contribution to the explanation of class identification once education, occupation, and income have been controlled. These same socioeconomic variables also account for the zero-order associations of race and union membership with class identification. However, indexes based upon the occupational levels of one's friends, neighbors, and relatives make independent contributions to one's class identification which are no less important than those made by education, occupation, and income. Thus, class identification rests not only upon one's own location in the status structure but upon the socioeconomic level of one's acquaintances.