Abstract:
Socioeconomic status (SES) is a prominent construct in social science research. Various methods for measuring SES exist, typically involving some combination of family income, parental education, and occupational status. Studies indicate that SES influences a wide range of health, cognitive, and socioemotional outcomes in children, with these effects starting before birth and persisting into adulthood. Numerous mechanisms have been proposed to explain the link between SES and child well-being, most of which involve disparities in access to material and social resources or responses to stress-inducing conditions by both children and their parents. SES impacts children's well-being at multiple levels, including family and neighborhood environments, and its effects are influenced by children's characteristics, family traits, and external support systems. International large-scale assessments are useful for examining variations in average student performance across different countries over time. Student achievement differences are linked to background characteristics, and although the most significant background factors may vary between education systems, family socioeconomic status (SES) typically explains a considerable portion of the variance in student achievement. Therefore, SES is regarded as a crucial element in education research, although challenges remain in determining the most effective way to measure SES operationally.