Does health affect subjective social status?
This talk will present potential designs for identifying a causal effect of health on subjective social status (SSS) – that is, where respondents place themselves on a vertical 1-10 scale representing the social hierarchy. Recent research in social epidemiology finds that SSS is associated with a wide range of health outcomes across a variety of contexts, independent of objective indicators of socio-economic position. Low SSS might then harm health, meaning that inequality in social status exacerbates health inequality. However, since this research is mostly cross-sectional, one question that naturally arises is the possibility of reverse causality: does an individual’s health affect how they rate their SSS? Our potential approaches to answering this question involve manipulating either the salience of respondents’ health, or their perception of their health.
Date: 24 May 2023, 14:15 (Wednesday, 5th week, Trinity 2023)
Venue: Nuffield College, New Road OX1 1NF
Speaker: Lewis Anderson (University of Oxford)
Organising department: Nuffield College
Organiser: Noah Bacine (University of Oxford)
Part of: CESS Colloquium Series
Booking required?: Recommended
Booking email: noah.bacine@nuffield.ox.ac.uk
Audience: Public
Editors: Noah Bacine, Martina Beretta