Reflecting Race and Status:

Experiencing Material Hardship and How People Think Others See Them

Victoria Harman and Aliya Saperstein, Stanford University 

This study brings together multidimensional and dynamic perspectives on poverty, inequality, and race to advance our understanding of persistent racial disparities in socioeconomic status. Drawing on unique longitudinal survey data, we are able to examine: 1) the predictors of future material hardship, using multiple measures of race, and 2) whether people’s reports of how they think strangers perceive their race are shaped, in part, by their past experiences with material hardship. We find that how people say someone passing by on the street would racially classify them predicts experiencing material hardship three months later, even among people who self-identify similarly. For example, all else being equal, people who say they are seen as Hispanic have significantly greater odds of experiencing future material hardship compared to people who say they are seen as white. However, we also find that people are significantly less likely to say that strangers perceive them as white if they experienced hardship in the past, and more likely to say that strangers perceive them as Hispanic or black. These results suggest studies that rely on static, cross-sectional measures of race and material hardship are missing important sources of variation in outcomes.