Association between objective and subjective socioeconomic status measures and childhood experiences

not-yet-known not-yet-known not-yet-known unknown Socioeconomic status (SES) is a complex and multidimensional construct that includes objective characteristics (e.g., income, education, occupation) and people’s subjective assessments of their position on the socioeconomic spectrum. Both types of indicators have been associated with impacts on different aspects of child development and parenting practices. However, studies that analyze children’s developmental needs from different perspectives of objective and subjective disadvantage are rare. In this study, we proposed to extend previous research on SES by comparing two approaches to measuring SES and analyzing their contribution to childhood experiences during the preschool year. For that, participants were recruited from schools and a public cultural center in Buenos Aires (N= 162; Mage= 5.77, SD= 0.36; 45.1% girls). Our results showed that both SES approaches (measured through maternal education level and parental perception of access to resources) partially overlap. Both are predictors of considerable variance in many childhood experiences. Nevertheless, subjective SES is the unique predictor for specific childhood experiences, whereas objective SES presents a greater influence (larger probabilities) on most childhood experiences analyzed. Although preliminary, these results highlight the need to consider the joint assessment of objective and subjective SES measurement strategies to understand the associations between SES and childhood experiences fully.