In sociology, social status is the "standing", the honour or prestige attaching to one's position in society.
In modern societies, occupation is usually thought of as the main dimension of status, but even in modern societies other memberships or affiliations (such as ethnic group, religion, gender, voluntary associations, fandom, hobby) can have an influence. A doctor will have higher status than a factory worker, for instance, but in some societies a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant doctor will have higher status than an immigrant doctor of minority religion.
In pre-modern societies, status differentiation can be more rigid, with the ideal type of the Indian caste being the extreme example, where one's status is determined by one's (conventionally) unchangeable membership of a group.
Status inconsistency is a situation while an individual enjoys a high status in certain area, he or she has a low status in another area. For example, teachers have a positive societal image but earn little money.
Statuses that are inborn are called ascribed statuses while statuses that individuals gained their own effort are called achieved statuses. Certain behaviors carry social stigmas that can affect status.
Status is a key idea in social stratification. Max Weber distinguishes status from class, but some contemporary empirical sociologists fuse the two ideas into "Socio-Economic Status", usually operationalised as a simple index of income, education and occupational prestige.
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