ABSTRACT
Socioeconomic status (SES) is an amorphous concept used in different ways by different social science disciplines. Parental education, occupation, and family income are the most common markers for SES. Some developmentalists combine education and occupation in the widely used few factor Hollingshead Social Status Index whereas others use single indicators as measures of SES. This chapter argues that developmental research is ill served by an aggregated, simplified, or superficial, treatment of SES. It reviews evidence on trends in SES indicators for children and find both encouraging and discouraging developments. Most encouraging is that the average schooling level of parents of young children has increased substantially over the past several decades. Income inequality has increased as well, simultaneously producing more affluent and poorer children. The chapter discusses some of the potential data-collection and analytic implications of taking SES more seriously in parenting and developmental research.
