Some might argue that the relation between materialism and the main study variables is
due to the high socioeconomic status of our sample. In other words, is materialism related
with ill-being only for adolescents who presumably want for nothing and are concerned
with image (e.g., attending an Ivy League school after graduation)? In order to test this
possibility, we first statistically controlled for socioeconomic status when conducting our
analyses, removing its effects on the outcomes. Second, youth from higher socioeconomic
backgrounds actually tend to be lower in materialism compared to youth from lower
socioeconomic backgrounds. Indeed, youth who live in areas of economic deprivation tend
to score particularly high on materialism (Nairn et al. 2007). Thus, it is unlikely that
materialism’s relationship with ill-being in our study was due to the high proportion of
‘‘rich’’ kids in our sample