Joan M. Ostrove

Socioeconomic status and health: what we know and what we don't.

Abstract: In the past 15 years, we have seen a marked increase in research on socioeconomic status (SES) and health. Research in the first part of this era examined the nature of the relationship of SES and health, revealing a graded association; SES is important to health not only for those in poverty, but at all levels of SES. On average, the more advantaged individuals are, the better their health. In this paper we examine the data regarding the SES‐health gradient, addressing causal direction, generalizability across populations and diseases, and associations with health for different indicators of SES. In the most recent era, researchers are increasingly exploring the mechanisms by which SES exerts an influence on health. There are multiple pathways by which SES determines health; a comprehensive analysis must include macroeconomic contexts and social factors as well as more immediate social environments, individual psychological and behavioral factors, and biological predispositions and processes.

Objective and Subjective Assessments of SocioEconomic Status and their Relationship to Self-Rated Health in an Ethnically Diverse Sample of Pregnant Women

A new measure of subjective socioeconomic status (SES) was examined in relation to self-rated physical health in pregnant women. Except among African Americans, subjective SES was significantly related to education, household income, and occupation. Subjective SES was significantly related to self-rated health among all groups. In multiple regression analyses, subjective SES was a significant predictor of self-rated health after the effects of objective indicators were accounted for among White and Chinese American women; among African American women and Latinas, household income was the only significant predictor of self-rated health. After accounting for the effects of subjective SES on health, objective indicators made no additional contribution to explaining health among White and Chinese American women; household income continued to predict health after accounting for subjective SES among Latinas and African American women.

Social Class and Belonging: Implications for College Adjustment

This study addressed the extent to which social class position structures a sense of belonging at college, and the ways in which belonging informs adjustment to college. Among 322 liberal arts college students, social class background was significantly associated with a sense of belonging at college and was marginally related to academic performance but was not related to the quality of the experience they were having at college. Sense of belonging mediated the relationship between class background and adjustment to college.

Women's Personality in Middle Age: Gender, History, and Midcourse Corrections

This article examines several key features of the course of adult development in the cohort of women born during the baby boom. By focusing on the women in this group and comparing their experience with that of older cohorts and research on men, the authors demonstrate the need for models of aging that take account of the inter-sections of history, gender, and individual development. Concepts proposed as universal features of middle age (midlife crisis, generativity, aging), as well as those proposed as specific to women (empty nest, menopause) are examined. Perhaps most important, certain features not commonly viewed as particularly important in womens middle aging (midlife review, identity, confident power) are shown to be central. The need for further research examining these same processes among men and different groups of women is underscored.

Middle Aging in Women: Patterns of Personality Change from the 30s to the 50s

This three-sample study focused on changes in four key features of womens personalities (identity, generativity, confident power, and concern about aging) over the course of middle age. Based on womens retrospective and concurrent feelings about their lives in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, scales were developed and validated for the four themes. We found that identity certainty, generativity, confident power, and concern about aging all were experienced as more prominent in middle age (the 40s) than in early adulthood (the 30s). We also found that these elements of personality were rated even higher in the 50s than the 40s. Scores seemed to be a function of age more than historical period or particular experiences in social roles. Scores on identity certainty, generativity, and confident power were positively related to well-being, while concern about aging was negatively related to well-being.

Identity in Three Cohorts of Midlife Women

To study similarities and differences in personality across historical periods, ego identity patterns, assessed by Q-sort prototypes, were compared in longitudinal samples of midlife women who had been young adults in the 1950s, early 1960s, and late 1960s. Identity pattern had similar relationships across sample with vector dimensions of the California Psychological Inventory but was related to work and family outcomes only in the younger cohorts, whose lives were less restricted. Women with the achieved-foreclosed pattern were more alike across cohort than women with the achieved-moratorium pattern. Among the latter, independence and high aspirations were salient salient features of the younger cohorts, whereas interest in motives of self and others were salient in the older cohort.

Predicting women's well-being in midlife: The importance of personality development and social role involvements

Theories of adult development suggest that both personality and social roles are sources of adult well-being, but most research has examined only social roles. An integrated model was used, including personality, number of roles, and role quality, to predict well-being in 2 longitudinal studies of college-educated women. Results for both samples indicated that role quality and personality development were important components of the path to well-being, whereas number of roles, occupied was important mainly in early adulthood. Moreover, the results provided support for E. Eriksons (1968) notion of the importance of the sequencing of personality development for later well-being. Path analyses indicated that engagement in multiple roles during early adulthood facilitated the development of identity, which predicted generativity and role quality, which in turn predicted well-being.

Relations Among Socioeconomic Status Indicators and Health for African-Americans and Whites

This investigation explored the relationship of socioeconomic status (SES) to physical and mental health in two nationally representative samples of whites and African-Americans. We examined the interrelations among SES variables and assessed their contribution to health for the two racial groups. Throughout, we assessed the contribution of a less traditional indicator of SES—wealth—in the SES–health relationship. As we expected, African-Americans had lower levels of education, household income, and wealth than whites. Unexpectedly, however, the strength of the interrelationships among the three SES indicators did not differ for African-Americans and whites. In addition, we found that SES operated to affect health in a very similar fashion for African-Americans and whites. We found that wealth, in addition to more traditional indicators of SES (education and household income), made a unique and significant contribution to explaining both physical and mental health. Examining relations of different SES indicators to health across groups is critical to eliminating persistent social inequalities in health.

Political participation and feminist consciousness among women activists of the 1960s

This paper examined the hypothesis that women who took part in student movements of the 1960s would be distinguishable from their contemporaries in terms of political ideology, political behavior, and feminism in middle age. Women who had been identified as student activists in public records during the late 1960s and early 1970s were compared to a sample of nonactivist peers. Although the two groups scored similarly on variables related to work and family arrangements, former activists scored higher on measures of leftist political orientation and political efficacy, reported greater political salience and collectivism, and reported greater current political participation. Although both groups reported high levels offeminist consciousness and identity, activists scored significantly higher. The difficulty of politically mobilizing women to combat gender discrimination is discussed in light of the discrepancy between consciousness and activism in the comparison group.

Social class, social change, and gender: working-class women at Radcliffe and after

This article explores the implications of social class background in the lives of women who attended Radcliffe College in the late 1940s and in the early 1960s. Viewing social classes as “cultures” with implications for how individuals understand their worlds, we examined social class background and cohort differences in womens experiences at Radcliffe, their adult life patterns, their constructions of womens roles, and the influence of the womens movement in their lives. Results indicated that women from working-class backgrounds in both cohorts felt alienated at Radcliffe. Cohort differences, across social class, reflected broad social changes in womens roles in terms of the rates of divorce, childbearing, level of education, and career activity. There were few social class-specific social changes, but there were a number of social class differences among the women in the Class of 1964. These differences suggested that women from working-class backgrounds viewed womens marital role with some suspicion, whereas women from middle- and upper-class backgrounds had a more positive view. Perhaps for this reason, working-class women reported that the womens movement confirmed and supported their skeptical view of middle-class gender norms.