Expanding Subjective Social Status Across Social Networks: Links Between Perceived Social Standing and Mental Healt

Existing literature has identified a gradient relationship between social status and health such that it is not only the lowest levels of status that are linked with poorer health; but instead, each step down in status is associated with incremental increases in health risks. Increasingly, research has highlighted the role of subjective perceptions of social status and their contribution to mental health beyond objective status information such as income or education. This project expands existing measures of subjective social status (status in the nation and community) to understand how social standing in closer, more narrowly defined social groups (neighborhood, friends, and family) is linked to mental health. Specifically, I will present findings on how subjective social status ratings relative to these five social networks are linked with depressive symptoms in different socioeconomic contexts (i.e., unemployment) and longitudinally over the course of a health improvement intervention.