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