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Access Type
WSU Access
Date of Award
January 2024
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Department
Psychology
First Advisor
Christopher Trentacosta
Abstract
This large cross-sectional study piloted a general framework for understanding the socioeconomic determinants of health in advanced capitalist societies. The framework represents a novel synthesis of existing concepts and measures that have been underexamined or undertheorized in academic psychology. The study began by identifying conceptual and practical problems with the study of socioeconomic status (SES) and examined these problems within the historical context of social inequality and its development. It then reviewed studies from various social science disciplines to understand social class, economic resources, and social statuses as distinct but related determinants of health. After recruiting a representative online sample of prime-working age Americans, this study tested many hypotheses and made a few significant contributions.
It was the first primary data analysis to relate E.O. Wright’s class typology to socioeconomic and health factors in a representative U.S. sample. The study also proposed a theory of multi-group social status and found evidence of construct validity for scales measuring status generally and in five arenas. There was preliminary support for the general framework connecting social class to general psychopathology and physical dysfunction via the pathways of general social status and economic resources. The study was limited by its design, sample idiosyncrasies, and inadequate sampling of the top and bottom of the class hierarchy.
Overall, the study calls attention to health inequalities associated with class and status hierarchies in America and the inadequacy of SES as a catch-all term and conceptual tool. Results provide evidence of construct validity for underexamined measures and point to areas for further inquiry at the intersection of psychology and social theory. A myriad of research directions were outlined, including refinement of neo-Marxian social class measures, development of the Hero Systems Status Scale, and use of the general framework in longitudinal studies that can address causal questions. In the end, this study may represent a call for a 21st century unified social science to grapple with the contradictory social relations of capitalist production and the evolved urge towards status hierarchies so that a new social order might be constructed to emancipate conscious life from needless humiliation, exploitation, and domination.
Recommended Citation
Mulligan, Daniel, "Beyond Ses: A Study Of Class, Status, Resources, And Health Under American Capitalism" (2024). Wayne State University Dissertations. 4103.
https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_dissertations/4103