Socioeconomic class/status

This chapter successfully attempted a quantitative documentation of floral species of district Kachchh, with an objective to prepare a near complete list of ethnobotanically useful species and prioritize them for conservation measures. Documentation of traditional knowledge of plant uses was quite voluminous, as reflected by the fact that around 900 persons from 85 geographically dispersed villages provided more than 12000 pieces of plant use related information. Representatives from different age, sex, educational status, socioeconomic classes and occupational types were adequately covered during the interview. More importantly, this information was collected from the representative common rural population so that other than commonly reported knowledge many unique uses and applications of plants are also recorded. 

PCB exposure is apparently correlated with socioeconomic status. The blood PCB level of inner-city African-American women correlates positively with income45—the higher the income, the more PCBs in their blood. Similar results have been found in the American white population, an apparent reflection of differences in housing and diet. PCBs are one instance in which effects on the middle class are apparently greater than effects on people in poverty. 

There is sometimes a sense of shame combined with this fear. A middle-class parent might have thought that only families of lower socioeconomic status could get lead poisoning and feel that they have failed to keep up a level of care for their children that is expected of a middle-class family. The idea that only poor inner-city children can be lead poisoned is a myth. Families of all social classes fall victim to the disease. 

It has been shown that teachers completing the short forced-choice scales are influenced by children s social backgrounds (Winneke, 1983) and in most studies no social factors have been controlled (Needleman et al, 1979 Lansdown et al, 1983) or where they have been, only broad indicators such as social class or socioeconomic status have been allowed for (Silva et al,19SA Hatzakis et al, 1985). This probably reflects the fact that it is more difficult to obtain social data from school teachers than from parents. 

The sample was thus a very homogeneous one, made up of children attending primary school, having no educational problems, and living in the vicinity of Brussels. The homogeneity is further evidenced by the socioeconomic status data this factor was assessed using an occupational prestige scale and showed our sample to be in the middle and upper classes. 

Most of our subjects are middle to upper-middle class white infants, for whom socioeconomic status and quality of caregiving are at most only weakly associated with prenatal or postnatal blood lead levels (Bellinger et al, 1985b, 1986b). They do not display the typical association between demographic/ economic risk factors and increased lead exposure seen in most samples. As a consequence, the likelihood of observing a spurious association between elevated lead exposure and poor outcome is lower in this sample than it is in most samples recruited to study the developmental impact of lead. 

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