Disentangling the collective and individual dimensions of social class: Picking the right measure matters

Despite a rapid expansion of social-psychological research into social class and its consequences, there remains little consensus regarding how best to measure class itself. Although both subjective rank and social-class identification are used to operationalize “subjective social class,” the two measures are theorized to diverge in how reliably they track individuals’ broader resource ecologies. Across two studies (N = 9,254), we empirically validate this perspective, finding that ZIP- and tract-level estimates of income and educational attainment positively predict individuals’ class identity, such that those from more affluent neighborhoods are more likely to identify with the middle and upper classes. Social rank, on the other hand, is inconsistently correlated with estimates of neighborhood affluence. In light of these neighborhood effects, we suggest that class identification is a better proxy for the structural and collective components of class phenomena, whereas measures of subjective rank may better estimate individual and situational facets.