There’s this cool measure called the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status. It was developed to capture self-perceived social status by means of a pictorial9-rung ladder. The Scale asks individuals to place an "X" on the rung on which they feel they stand. There are two versions of the ladder: one instructs respondents to mark, relative to others in their country, where they currently stand in terms of income, education, and occupation; the other asks respondents to mark their status, relative to other members of their community. Research participants choose their own definitions of community. In one study, significantly more African-American than European-Americans defined community as neighborhood (80% to 33.3%). Otherwise, there were no gender or race differences in definitions, which included: city or town (37%), religious groups (22%), social supporters (20%), workplace (18%), family (18%), friends (12%), people with similar interests (12%), their region (12%), and the nation or world (10%), plus a bunch of idiosyncratic categories. So cogitate on that and come back to me.
Across several studies encompassing a wide range of countries, subjective social status (SSS) has been a better predictor of health and happiness than objective indicators of status. For instance, in a large longitudinal study of English civil servants, SSS predicted health outcomes better than civil service employment grade. The authors speculated that subjective status is based on a wider range of information than single global measures of objective status and is more likely to incorporate relevant circumstances that influence health trajectories.
However, most studies use multiple indicators of objective social status, with the same basic findings: when it comes to physical and psychological well-being, perceptions of status matter more than the reality.
References
Adler, N.E., Singh-Manoux, A., Schwartz, J.E., Stewart, J., Matthews, K. & Marmot, M.G. Social status and health: A comparison of British civil servants in Whitehall II with European- and African-Americans in CARDIA. Social Science and Medicine. 2008 Mar;66(5):1034-45. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2007.11.031.
Scott KM, Al-Hamzawi AO, Andrade LH, Borges G, Caldas-de-Almeida JM, Fiestas F, et al. Associations between subjective social status and DSM-IV mental disorders: results from the World Mental Health surveys. JAMA Psychiatry 2014; 71: 1400–8
Singh-Manoux A, Marmot MG, Adler NE. Does subjective social status predict health and change in health status better than objective status? Psychosom Med 67: 855–861, 2005