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Social stratification and socioeconomic variables
Erik Bihagen coordinator of SUNSTRAT, SOFI,
Stockholm University
What is social stratification? (1)
Uneven distribution of resources (e.g. money, power)
In large, or in between categories such as social
classes, genders and ethnic groups
What is social stratification? (2)
Uneven distribution of resources (economic resources,
power) between positions defined in relation to the
labour market
+ uneven chances of reaching resourceful positions
What is social stratification? (2)
Uneven distribution of resources (economic resources,
power) between positions defined in relation to the
labour market
Inequality of conditions
+ uneven chances of reaching resourceful positions
Inequality of opportunities
Socioeconomic variables
aka Socio Economic Status (SES)
Most important:
Income
Education
Occupationally based measures, social class,
socio economic indices, prestige measures
Why several measures?
No good reason, similar associations with outcomes...
Good reasons. Example health outcomes
mainly driven by
education – cognitive aspect, knowledge
income – resources but risk for reversed causality
social class – resources in a broader meaning
occupation/social class – occupational hazards
class origin - lifestyles?
Life course aspect of SES
Typical serie of events:
(birth) education – 1st occupation – 2nd occ -
...retirement (death)
Research indicates that education and 1st occupation
(e.g. as an occupational score) are the main
determinants of successive SES. Parents SES some
importance net of education and 1st occupation
e.g Härkönen & Bihagen 2011
Intergenerational aspects of SES
Substantial correlations across generations in terms of
different SES, social class etc (mediated by
education and 1st occupation).
e.g Erikson & Goldthorpe 1992, Breen & Jonsson
2005
Income correlations across generations far from being
completely mediated by education (and occupation),
e.g. Mood, Jonsson & Bihagen 2012
Strong correlations at the occupational level, kins of
medical doctors become medical doctors etc.
e.g. Jonsson, Grusky, Di Carlo, Pollak, Brinton.
2009.
Summing up so far
Inequalities are structured:
Tendency for inequalities to be reproduced across
generations (but lots of exceptions)
Tendency for maturation in incomes and occupational
attainment within generation at around the age of
35-40 – also means rising inequalites in the first half
of the life course. Education generally comes first.
• How to measure one’s position in the socioeconomic
hierarchy?
• Several alternatives
• These reflect disciplinary conventions (economics
vs sociology) and sometimes more fundamental
thoughts about the strat system
Measurement more in detail
• Rather obvious: money buys stuff
• Earnings, total income, individual income, or
household income?
• Incomes can vary a lot from year to year
Should one use single years or averages over several
years?
• Incomes also vary across the life course
For men, measurements around ages 30-40 years
often seen as good proxies for lifetime income
Measurement: income
• Education relatively fixed from an early age (~25-30
yrs)
• Predictor of income and class position in later life and
often used as a proxy for them
• Education can also be seen as bringing valuable skills,
knowledge, life styles; also valued in itself
• Cross-national measures? (CASMIN, ISCED)
• Educational level only or also field of education?
Measurement: education
• In Europe especially, the class structure often seen to
consist of a limited number of (big) classes (service
class, working class, etc)
• Various class schema proposed, of which maybe
nowadays maybe the most common is the one
proposed by Erikson and Goldthorpe (EGP). New
similar one ESeC – European Socioeconomic
Classification
• Occupations placed to different classes based on a)
employer-employee axis, b) skills, and c) type of labor
contract
Measurement: class
EGP schema (one version)
I+II Service class (professionals, administrators,
officials, managers)
III Routine non-manual
IVa+IVb Petty bourgeoisie
IVc Farmers
V+VI Technicians, supervisors, skilled manual
VIIa Semi- and unskilled non-farm workers
VIIb Semi- and unskilled agricultural workers
• Recently, questions have been raised of whether (big)
classes are appropriate measures
• Are boundaries clear?
• Is within-class variation smaller than between-
class?
• Some studies that instead emphasized the role of
”small classes”, i.e. occupations and small groupings
• With registry data enough with cases, but risk of too
much detail – missing the wood for the trees?
Measurement: occupational level
• Especially in the United States, socioeconomic position
seen as more gradational: smaller steps in the ladder
• The ranking of occupations according to their prestige
is almost ”universal”
• SIOPS, or the ”Treiman score”, is a commonly used
and easily accessible measure
Measurement: occupational prestige
• Another option in the ”gradational” approach is to use
other socioeconomic indeces (SEI) that rank
occupations based on prestige and/or average
educational levels and incomes
Measurement: socioeconomic index
• The scale is derived empirically from patterns of social
interaction, the Cambridge scale, CAMSIS.
Occupations for which their incumbents tend not to
interact are at the opposites of the scale.
Measurement: social interaction scales
• Inkomst och taxeringsregistret IoT (later also LISA),
full coverage from 1968
poor documentation before 1990
only approximation of households possible for non-
census years, i.e. approximation of household income
no indicator of work hours – low paid or part time
worker?
• Lönestrukturstatistiken
From the 1990s
Wages per time unit
Only full coverage in public sector and large firms
Incomes in Swedish registers
• Statistics Sweden’s Education register, 1985-
• Several sources, primarily censuses (1970, 1990) and
school registers, but also from authorities who monitor
certain credentials (e.g., socialstyrelsen for medical
doctors)
• One can also construct education measures based on school
registers directly
• Graduation, 9th grade
• Application/Graduation,upper-secondary school
• Application/Graduation, tertiary education
• Adult secondary education registration
• New standard from 2000, some problems regarding
comparability
Education in Swedish registers
• The censuses and yrkesregistret
• Yrkesregistret based on Lönestrukturstatistiken.
NB. Information are gathered from several years.
From year 2001, but only employees.
• New standards over time – current classification
SSYK-96. Some translation keys in between
classification at my personal web page.
• Employment status in terms of number of
subordinates etcetera needed for more elaborated
versions of social class, not available.
Occupation in Swedish registers
An example of ’occupational’ SES
• GEODE – Grid Enabled Occupational Data Environment
http://www.geode.stir.ac.uk/
• Harry Ganzebooms web pages:
http://home.fsw.vu.nl/hbg.ganzeboom/isco08/
• New initiative by me to simplify addition of
occupational information for Stata-users
http://www2.sofi.su.se/~ebi/ (being updated now)
Some resources, occupational info
Recommended