Class identification of married employed women and men in America

This article analyzes the class identification of married, employed women and men in U. S. society. Focusing on the relative weights between wife's and husband's attributes in determining class identification for three class attributes (education, income, and occupational prestige) and on population heterogeneity in those weights, the study finds that men and women, on average, agree on how to weight the contributions of wife's and husband's income and occupation to subjectively identified class: wife's income and husband's income equally affect class identification but only husband's occupational prestige-not wife's-affects class identification. By contrast, men and women do not agree about the contributions of husband's and wife's education to subjectively identified class: education is a more individualized determinant of class, especially for men. The article also finds population heterogeneity in the weights: for example, self-employed women and African-American women have a more "independent" basis of class identification than do other employed women, and there is an interplay of gender role and self-enhancement in class identification among couples where the wife has higher income than the husband. Theoretical implications of these findings are also discussed.