Donald J. Treiman

A standard international socio-economic index of occupational status

Abstract In this paper we present an International Socio-Economic Index of occupational status (ISEI), derived from the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO), using comparably coded data on education, occupation, and income for 73,901 full-time employed men from 16 countries. We use an optimal scaling procedure, assigning scores to each of 271 distinct occupation categories in such a way as to maximize the role of occupation as an intervening variable between education and income (in contrast to taking prestige as the criterion for weighting education and income, as in the Duncan scale). We compare the resulting scale to two existing internationally standardized measures of occupational status, Treimans international prestige scale (SIOPS) and Goldthorpes class categories (EGP), and also with several locally developed SEI scales. The performance of the new ISEI scale compares favorably with these alternatives, both for the data sets used to construct the scale and for five additional data sets.

Sex and the Process of Status Attainment: A Comparison of Working Women and Men.

The process of educational, occupational and income attainment of working women and men is compared, utilizing data from representative national samples of women age 3044, their husbands and men of corresponding age. Comparisons are made separately for whites and nonwhites. The process and level of educational and occupational attainment is shown to be virtually identical for women and men, but women earn far less than men even when work experience and hours of work are taken into account. Married women are shown to earn less than single women, and the sources of this difference are analyzed.

Three Internationally Standardised Measures for Comparative Research on Occupational Status

The classification and scaling of occupations constitutes the foundation of much, if not most, research on social stratification. Whether one studies access to desirable positions in societies (such as education or income), consumer styles, health outcomes, social interaction patterns, or social values and attitudes, measures of social background will more likely than not include a measure of social position derived from occupational position. In addition, the study of access to occupations is an important research topic in its own right. Ever since it was recognised that the division of labour is the kernel of social inequality, stratification researchers have developed ways to derive social status measures from information on occupations. Typically, this involves two steps. First, information about occupations is secured in a detailed classification of several hundred categories, often census or other official classifications. In comparative research with existing data, the task is often to reconcile the various classifications that have been used to code detailed occupational information in the component studies. In a second step, these detailed occupational classifications are recoded into status measures of more manageable size and sociological relevance, depending on the preferences of researchers and the nature of their research questions. There are many derived scales and broad classifications in circulation (Grusky and van Rompaey 1992).

The impact of the Cultural revolution on trends in educational attainment in the People's Republic of China

This article examines the effects of social origins on educational attainment, using data from the 1982 census of the Peoples Republic of China. Analysis of intergenerational relationships in China using census data is possible because nearly half of Chinese adult men live with their fathers. The authors show that the educational attainment of men is highly egalitarian with respect to social origins and has become increasingly so over time. During the Cultural Revolution (1966‐76), the advantage of coming from an educated family or an intelligentsia or cadre family was drastically reduced. The weak association between fathers socioeconomic status and sons educational attainment reflects massive state intervention.

Politics and life chances in a state socialist regime : Dual career paths into the urban Chinese elite, 1949 to 1996

Recent research on career mobility under communism suggests that party membership and education may have had different effects in administrative and professional careers. Using life history data from a nationally representative 1996 survey of urban Chinese adults, we subject this finding to more stringent tests and find even stronger contrasts between career paths. Only recently has college education improved a high school graduates odds of becoming an elite administrator, while it has always been a virtual prerequisite for a professional position. On the other hand, party membership, always a prerequisite for top administrative posts, has never improved the odds of becoming an elite professional. We also find that professionals rarely become administrators, and vice versa. Differences between career paths have evolved over the decades, but they remain sharp. Thus, China has a hybrid mobility regime in which the loyalty principles of a political machine are combined with, and segregated from, the meritocratic standards of modern professions. Recent changes may reflect a return to generic state socialist practices rejected in the Mao years rather than the influence of an emerging market economy

Inequality and equality under Chinese socialism : The Hukou system and intergenerational occupational mobility

Data from a 1996 national probability sample of Chinese men is used to analyze the effect of family background on occupational mobility in contemporary China, with particular attention to the rural‐urban institutional divide. China has an unusually high degree of mobility into agriculture and also, apparently, unusual “openness” in the current urban population. Both patterns are explained by China’s distinctive population registration system, which simultaneously fails to protect rural‐origin men from downward mobility and permits only the best educated to attain urban registration status, resulting in severe sample selection bias in previous studies restricted to the urban population. New light is shed on the relationships between the socialist state and social fluidity and between inequality and mobility.

Class identification in the United States.

Data derived from a national sample survey reveal that education, main earners occupation, and family income have independent effects upon class identification. Multiple regresion analyses reveal that ownership of stocks and bonds in private companies, savings bonds, and rental property makes no significant contribution to the explanation of class identification once education, occupation, and income have been controlled. These same socioeconomic variables also account for the zero-order associations of race and union membership with class identification. However, indexes based upon the occupational levels of ones friends, neighbors, and relatives make independent contributions to ones class identification which are no less important than those made by education, occupation, and income. Thus, class identification rests not only upon ones own location in the status structure but upon the socioeconomic level of ones acquaintances.

The Process of Status Attainment in the United States and Great Britain

New procedures permitting a level of precision not heretofore posible in the comparative study of social mobility and the process of status attainment are used to compare data for the United States and Great Britain. We show that the British stratification system is somewhat more closed than that of the United States: there is less intergenerational occupational mobility in Britain, and the correlations among status variables are generally stronger. However, despite radical differences in the educational systems, the role of educational attainment in occupational mobility is highly similar in the two countries.

Sex and Earnings in Industrial Society: A Nine-Nation Comparison.

A substantial difference in average earnings between men and women employed full-time is documented for each of nine industrial nations, and several hypothesized explanations for the earnings gap are explored: a human capital hypothesis-women earn less because they have less education and experience; a dual career hypothesis-women earn less because they adjust their work behavior to meet the demands of family obligations; and an occupational segregation hypothesis-women earn less because they are concentrated in lowlevel jobs. None of these hypotheses receives much support in any country, leaving open the possibility that the earnings differences are due to deeply entrenched institutional arrangements that limit womens opportunities and achievements.

Status Discrepancy and Prejudice

The effect of status discrepancy on attitudes toward Negroes is examined by positing an additive model of the relation between status variable and prejudice through a dummy-variable multiple-regression procedure and investigating departures from the predictions of the model. According to the status-discrepancy hypothesis, status-discrepant individuals should exhibit greater prejudice than predicted by the additive regression model. Two problems are considered, one involving income and education as status variable, the other involving education and education of spouse, using data from a representative national sample of the adult white population of the United States. For both problems, the predictions of the additive model closely match the observed patterns, indicating that status discrepancy perse has no effect on prejudice.