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Abstract: Socioeconomic status is reflected in multiple hierarchies, including income, wealth, education, and occupation. Large literatures investigate the amounts of inequality between people's positions in each hierarchy, and people's mobility between positions over time. We know less about the consistency of people's positions across multiple hierarchies. Consistent positions are common (e.g., high education, high wealth), but so are inconsistent positions (e.g., high education, low wealth). When consistent positions become more common, socioeconomic status becomes more generalized, permeating multiple dimensions of wellbeing---the `haves and have nots' turn into the `have everythings and have nothings.' Has this turn taken place? To answer this question, and to advance multidimensional research about inequality, we build on an old concept: status consistency. Status consistency captures the similarity in people's positions across hierarchies. Did status consistency rise in the U.S. since the 1980s, as income and wealth inequalities rose? And did status consistency trend similarly for Black, White, and Hispanic people? Using PSID data on four socioeconomic hierarchies, we find that status consistency did not rise overall. Indeed, it declined among Black and Hispanic people, but rose among White people. We conclude that researching socioeconomic hierarchies one by one misses trends in socioeconomic status. We open pathways for multidimensional research.

The Sociology Seminar Series for Hilary Term is convened by Zachary Parolin and Carlo Perrotta. For more information about this or any of the seminars in the series, please contact sociology.secretary@nuffield.ox.ac.uk.