Same Job, Different Status? The Social Significance of Network Status Deviation Across 28 Societies

Social status is a key dimension of stratification. Since Weber, social honor belongs to persons and groups and is expressed partly through the company they keep. Yet occupational status scales assign the same status to everyone in the same job. We introduce Network Status Deviation (NSD): the distance between the weighted mean status of a person’s contacts and that of their occupational peers’ contacts, capturing whether a person keeps better, worse, or similar company than their peers. Leveraging ISSP 2017 position-generator data across 28 societies, we derive this measure from original commensality, ISEI, and SIOPS scores. Net of class, education, and income, NSD and occupational status are jointly associated with subjective social position, health and well-being, social trust, and socio-political participation and orientations, with magnitudes comparable to class and education. To illuminate the social significance of status, the company people keep is as important as their occupation.