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The “Social Determinants of Health” construct is well-entrenched in the way that both health care providers and researchers think about the effects of social conditions on health. Although there are a number of theories that fall under this rubric for the social production of health and illness, the core of this construct is the idea that social stratification leads to health disparity. In this chapter we show how such a mechanism might work for relating social stratification and job stress.

We used the pooled 2002, 2006, 2010 Quality of Work Life modules of the General Social Survey to test a model of the relationships between gender, age, education, and nativity with “bad jobs” and indicators of health status.

Findings show that social status is positively associated with job quality and with health in turn. Lower social status characteristics are related to bad jobs and poorer health.

Health disparities are thus “explained” by the consequences of social status for occupation and job quality, thereby depicting exactly how health disparities arise in normal social life. The theory and results underscore the importance of explicitly modeling social status factors in explanations of health disparities.

It is common to relate health disparities to social status but it is not common to show the mechanisms whereby social status actually produces health disparities. Addressing health disparities means addressing the consequences of social inequalities for normal activities of social life such as work. Improving job quality would be a health “treatment” that addresses health disparities.

This chapter demonstrates the value of explicitly tracing the consequences of status differences on differences in social context such as work conditions and then health. In the study of health disparities this is not often done. In this chapter we show how social inequality leads to occupational and job quality differences that, in turn, lead to health differences.

Purpose – To present a new conceptual framework for understanding how perceptions of fairness shape the experience of respect in groups and its implications for individuals’ engagement in groups, their psychological well-being, and intergroup relations.

Design/methodology/approach – Research on fairness perceptions and respect emerge from different theoretical traditions including theories of justice, social identity theory, and social context and health. We review this body of work and present the dual pathway model of respect, developed to integrate the different lines of research into a single testable framework. Research testing the model's predictions is presented.

Findings – The dual pathway model posits that concerns about respect follow from the need for social inclusion and for status attainment. Fair treatment from group peers and authorities communicates the extent to which these needs are satisfied, and as such, perceptions of being liked (indicative of inclusion) and of being judged worthy (indicative of status attainment) independently and differentially predict social engagement and psychological well-being.

Originality/value – The dual pathway model provides a framework for integrating and extending existing research on the experience of respect in groups. The model highlights how the inclusion and status dimensions of respect differentially shape outcomes relevant to group functioning: social engagement and psychological well-being. Insights from the model address a broad array of challenges faced by organizations, including building commitment, managing diversity, and promoting health and well-being among its members.

Building on sociological research that examines the allocation of rewards in peer evaluations, we argue that the recognition of cultural producers’ work varies with their status and social distance from the audience members who evaluate them. We study the influence of these two mechanisms within the context of the Norwegian advertising industry. Specifically, we looked at how cultural producers’ status and social distance from jury members affect their chances of being honored in “The Silver Tag” – one of the main digital advertising award contests in Norway – during the period 2003–2010. While our findings provide support for status-based rewards allocation, the positive effects of status may be more circumscribed than previously thought. When accounting for the existence of previous connections between audience members and cultural producers, we find that cultural producers are more or less likely to receive an accolade depending on their degree of separation from the audience members. By exposing network-based determinants of consecrating decisions, and suggesting that the positive effects of status may be more circumscribed than previously thought, our findings shed important light on the social foundations of evaluation and, more broadly, the mechanisms of reward allocation in cultural fields.

Status, which is based on differences in esteem and honor, is an ancient and universal form of inequality which nevertheless interpenetrates modern institutions and organizations. Given its ubiquity and significance, we need to better understand the basic nature of status as a form of inequality. I argue that status hierarches are a cultural invention to organize and manage social relations in a fundamental human condition: cooperative interdependence to achieve valued goals with nested competitive interdependence to maximize individual outcomes in the effort. I consider this claim in relation to both evolutionary arguments and empirical evidence. Evidence suggests that the cultural schema of status is two-fold, consisting of a deeply learned basic norm of status allocation and a set of more explicit, variable, and changing common knowledge status beliefs that people draw on to coordinate judgments about who or what is more deserving of higher status. The cultural nature of status allows people to spread it widely to social phenomena (e.g., firms in a business field) well beyond its origins in interpersonal hierarchies. In particular, I argue, the association of status with social difference groups (e.g., race, gender, class-as-culture) gives inequalities based on those difference groups an autonomous, independent capacity to reproduce themselves through interpersonal status processes.

This article explores the contingent role that social ties play in the emergence of status hierarchies. We argue that, while status is formed based on actors’ perception and understanding of social cues, network structure, and position influence this process by influencing the attention and legitimacy given to the focal actor in accordance with social cues that signal an actor’s identity. Using a large data set from an open-source software development community, we find that a broker linking diverse network members is less likely to receive status ratings from others and that the rating is more likely to be low when a broker receives a rating. Furthermore, we find evidence that the effects of brokerage are contingent upon certain factors that may affect the attention and legitimacy given to actors in the process of status evaluation, such as the actor’s prior status. An actor’s prior status was found to weaken the negative effect of brokerage. The importance of this study for theories of status, social networks, and attention is discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to examine firms’ early adoption decision regarding new practices, and what social factors – that is social status and political legitimacy – may influence decision processes under ambiguity.

The study examines outside director presence among publicly listed firms in China between 1991 and 2000, using discrete time – event history analysis based on observation of 770 firms.

Social status negatively influences early adoption decisions through the expectation of status enhancement, while political legitimacy is also influential because early adoptions are more attractive to firms in need of political access. Moreover, a firm’ political legitimacy moderates the effect of social status, due to their resource dependence on different stakeholders.

This study’s findings provide important insights for research on diffusion models of new practices by identifying the social processes during early diffusion, and articulating different effects of status and legitimacy. It further emphasizes the sociopolitical perspectives and social motives of governance structure changes in emerging economies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the social status of migrants in a culturally liberal and historically cosmopolitan port city in Turkey.

A novel data set from the Izmir Labor Market Household Survey is used. Social status is measured by occupational status, wages, and education. In addition, parents’ education, as well as, duration of unemployment for migrants is analyzed. Occupational status and education analyzes are based on ordered probit models. The probability that an individual with given characteristics will have an uneducated parent is estimated with a probit model. Weibull duration model is employed for the unemployment duration.

Migrants in Izmir are likely to have occupations that claim a lower status. Migrants have higher wages so migrants are taking jobs of lower status but higher pay. The probability of exiting unemployment for migrants is higher, that is the duration of unemployment for migrants is shorter. Male have higher education levels and receive higher wages. Parents’ education for migrants is lower in general. Female migrants have lower education levels than natives, male or female, and do not receive higher wages than female natives in the labor market. The paper concludes that the social status of migrant women is definitely lower than natives, male or female, and male migrants. Evidence on the social status of migrant men also points to a disadvantage as even though the male migrant is more educated on average, he is likely to hold an occupation of lower status.

This paper employs a novel data set to investigate the social status of migrants vs natives. In addition, it undertakes a multi-dimensional econometric analyses of social status. Unemployment has not been included in econometric analysis of social status before.

Structural sociological framework suggests that sociopolitical and economic factors exert independent effects on variations in family status attainment (FSA) across the social/ethnic groups. The purpose of this paper is to analyze and predict how social-political-economic factors exert effects on disparity in FSA between the majority and minority ethnic groups in Bangladesh.

This study used the cross-cultural survey design to analyze the research objective. In doing so, 585 men (Muslim n=150, Hindu n=145, Santal n=145, and Oraon n=145) who were randomly selected through cluster sampling from the Rasulpur union of Bangladesh were interviewed with a semi-structured questionnaire.

The results of Pearson’s χ² test have shown that FSA was significantly different (p<0.01) associated with social-political-economic factors between the majority and minority groups. The results of the linear regression analysis (coefficients of β) suggested that social, political, and economic factors were the best predictors (significant at p<0.01 level) to perpetuate disparity in FSA between the majority and minority ethnic groups in Bangladesh. In addition, the results of coefficients of determination (R²) suggested that unequal distribution of social-political-economic resources perpetuates 10-14 percent disparities in FSA between the majority and minority groups in Bangladesh.

Although the findings of the study are suggestive to understand the disparity in FSA associated with social-political-economic factors, further cross-cultural research is needed on how the social psychological factor affects variations in FSA between the groups in Bangladesh. In spite of the limitation, social policymakers may apply the findings with caution to design social policy and practice to reduce the disparity in FSA between the majority and minority ethnic groups in Bangladesh.

The cross-cultural findings are original in linking structural sociological theory and comparative family welfare policy to reduce the disparity in FSA between the majority and minority groups in Bangladesh.

The distinction between network theories and theories of networks is particularly salient in studying social status because social status is both a consequence and an antecedent of network ties. Status is a consequence of network ties because it is conferred by interdependent acts of deference connecting a sender and a recipient. Status is also an antecedent of network ties because it affects individual preferences for social interaction which produce distinct forms of preferential attachment. A new generation of stochastic actor oriented models (SAOM) for social networks is now available that may help to integrate network theories and theories of networks.

Relying on Social Identity Theory (SIT), Relative Deprivation Theory (RDT) and System Justification Theory (SJT), this study aims at examining identity enhancement strategies of blue-collar workers who might be described as members of low-status groups having negative social identity. In the scope of this study, individual and collective strategies for identity enhancement of blue-collar workers have been proposed with the support of above mentioned theories. First of all, factors determining identity enhancement strategies have been described. Then, individual mobility conditions were explained and informal workplace learning was suggested as an individual mobility strategy for blue-collar workers to enhance social identity. In addition, it was argued that high self-monitoring blue collars are more likely than low self-monitoring blue collars to use individual mobility strategy. It was also emphasized that through union membership, high identifier blue collars will adopt a collective identity enhancement strategy. Finally, acceptance of low-status strategy was proposed for blue-collar workers in case they perceive their group’s low status as stable and legitimate.