Comparing objective and subjective status: Gender and space (and environmental justice?)

The environmental justice literature has described differential health effects of environmental toxins and pollutants on people of different socio-economic status (SES) that may not always reflect differing levels of exposure. We offer four questions or contentions that together may contribute to understanding this conundrum and then present an empirical exploration of one of these questions: Does the relationship between SES and self-perceived status vary in space? Utilizing data from an original questionnaire survey of randomly selected adults conducted in twenty-five communities in British Columbia, Canada, a supplementary data set containing demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the communities themselves, and multilevel modelling techniques, this article describes relationships between objective and subjective measures of social status, by gender and in space. Our analysis contributes to the development of innovative environmental justice models by bringing some spatial sensitivity to interrelationships among these aspects of status.