What Do Movies Teach Children About Money, Class, and Status?

Science of Us reports on a new paper about the way money, class, and status are portrayed in films for children. It is Benign Inequality: Frames of Poverty and Social Class Inequality in Children’s Movies published in the Journal of Poverty by Dr. Jessi Streib, Miryea Ayala, and Colleen Wixted. Some of the findings:

The films mostly feature wealthy primary characters. The researchers evaluated the films’ content to divide primary characters into five classes, from “upper class” to “poor,” and discovered that more than 56 percent of the films’ primary characters were in the top two categories, upper class or upper middle class (it turns out Santa Claus is upper middle class). So, at least compared to the real-world distribution of wealth, middle- and lower-class characters were significantly underrepresented.

The films mostly make class out to not be a big deal. Streib and her co-authors note that even when characters from lower classes are represented, “their hardships are generally downplayed or erased.”

Of course, these portrayals are not unique to movies. Films like “Cinderella” and “Aladdin” are based on old stories. And fiction for all ages tends to speak to our fantasies about having money and power or by outsmarting those who do. But studies like these provide an important reminder that parents should use what children see as an opportunity to talk to them about their values and let them know that they should ask (privately) any time they have questions about money, class, and status.