Notwithstanding the prevalence of poverty in contemporary societies and the impact in children’s lives itself, research on how children perceive social class self?categorization is scarce. This study aims to investigate children’s implicit and explicit social--?class self? categorization and the moderating role of age and socio?economic status (SES). We interviewed 532 6?to?12?years?old (M=9.03, SD=2.19) children from five Portuguese public schools. A Child Implicit Association Test was used to measure implicit social?class self?categorization, assessing associations of ‘me’ with ‘poor’ vs. ‘non--? poor’ child categories. Explicit social?class self?categorization was measured asking children to report to what extent they belonged to these two categories. The results show that all children explicitly self?identified with the non?poor category, but the scores were lower for older children. Lower SES children (financial support receivers) also self?categorized as non?poor, but less so compared to children with higher SES. At the implicit level, a similar pattern emerged regarding SES, but no age differences were found. Although across age groups, children explicitly and implicitly self--?identified with the non?poor category, the implicit measure scores indicate a significantly weaker self--?categorization as non?poor. A significant correlation between the implicit and explicit self--?categorization scores was found, except for younger children. The results of this study are consistent with the hypothesis that lower SES children are motivated to manage a social identity threat posed by stigmatized social--?class membership by distancing themselves explicitly from the poor category. Interestingly, the mismatch between the explicit and implicit social--?class self--? categorization becomes weaker with increasing age, possibly as children’s reasoning and experience with social class self--?categorization develops further. This study contributes to the scarce literature on the development of implicit and explicit self--?categorization in childhood, and to a better understanding of how these processes unfold in intergroup contexts where group boundaries are more diffuse.

--