Measuring subjective social status: A case study of older Taiwanese

Despite widespread use of measures of social status and increasing interest in the relationship between social status and health, variables used to denote social status are often inappropriate for older populations. This paper examines responses to a recently developed measure of subjective social position, known as the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status. The instrument asks respondents to use 10 rungs of a ladder to position themselves socioeconomically relative to other people in their country and, separately, in their community. These questions were incorporated in a recent national survey of middle-aged and older adults in Taiwan. The objective of the analysis is to gain a better understanding of how such subjective assessments are formed -- i.e., to explore the contribution of social, economic, and cultural factors in the determination of position within a social hierarchy -- and to assess the potential utility of the ladder instrument in social science and health research. Results from Taiwan are compared with those derived from subjective measures of social status in Western populations. The findings support use of this instrument as a measure of subjective social status for an older population and suggest that it may provide further insights into the social gradient in health.