"Status" splits into a lot of distinct categories depending on which system is doing the classifying. Here's a broad map:
Legal / civil status
- Citizenship or nationality (citizen, permanent resident, refugee, stateless)
- Immigration status (visa holder, asylum seeker, undocumented)
- Capacity status (minor, adult, ward, emancipated minor)
- Criminal justice status (defendant, convict, parolee, exonerated)
Marital / relational status
- Single, married, divorced, widowed, separated, common-law/domestic partner
- Legal kinship status (next of kin, guardian, dependent)
Socio-economic status
- Class position (working class, middle class, elite) — often measured by income, education, occupation combined
- Wealth/asset status (net worth brackets, creditworthiness)
Professional / employment status
- Employed, self-employed, unemployed, retired, student
- Rank or title within an organization (junior, senior, executive, tenured, probationary)
- Licensure/certification status (licensed, board-certified, in good standing, suspended)
Health status
- Physical and mental health classifications (medical diagnoses, disability status)
- Insurance/coverage status
Social status (sociological sense)
- Ascribed status — assigned at birth or without effort (caste, hereditary title, gender, ethnicity in stratified societies)
- Achieved status — earned through action (doctor, athlete, criminal, graduate)
- Master status — the one trait that dominates how a person is perceived overall (e.g., "the CEO," "the ex-convict")
Membership / affiliation status
- Citizen of an organization, club, religious body, guild, union
- Rank within initiatory or hierarchical systems (novice, member, elder, master)
Historical / civilizational framings — since status categories aren't culturally universal:
- Caste systems (Indian varna/jati) — status tied to birth and ritual purity
- Feudal estates (clergy, nobility, commoners) in medieval Europe
- Roman civil status (citizen, freedman, slave — each with different legal capacities)
- Confucian role-based status (defined relationally: ruler/subject, parent/child, etc.)
- Initiatory/esoteric grades — Masonic degrees, Sufi stations (maqamat), Kabbalistic levels of soul (nefesh, ruach, neshamah), Vedic ashramas (student, householder, forest-dweller, renunciate) — these frame status as a stage of inner development rather than external position
- Ancestor status in many traditional societies — the dead retain a "status" as active participants in the social order (venerated ancestor, restless spirit)