Measures Of Socioeconomic Status by Mary G Powers

Author:Mary G Powers [Powers, Mary G]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Sociology
ISBN: 9780429724954
Google: 5_tNEAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 59573018
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-11-18T00:00:00+00:00

Analyzing Sex Differences In Attainment With Different Occupational Indexes

Previous research reports sex differences in occupational attainment and in the processes that link these achievements with characteristics of social background, length of schooling, and full-time occupations in the early work history, (e.g., Featherman and Hauser, 1976a; McClendon, 1976; Sewell, Hauser, and Wolf, 1980). Yet reported differences are not consistently replicated across studies. For example, Sewell, et al. (1980) conclude that women’s continued reliance on educational training and credentials, rather than accumulated job experience, differentiates their course of occupational attainment from that of men. By contrast, Tyree and Treas (1979) suggest that it is men who continue to convert their formal schooling into better occupations and whose early occupational attainments are of lesser relative importance for later achievements than is schooling.

Unfortunately, these differences are difficult to reconcile, for they rest on different bodies of data, sample definitions, and the use of different scales of occupational standing. In this section, we examine the effects of choice of occupational index on the relative occupational attainments of men and women.

There are several reasons for supposing that sex differences in attainment may manifest the effects of metric in the analysis. First, almost all previous research on this topic has used an occupational status scale derived from the characteristics of men, e.g., the Duncan index. One can question how well such an index captures the relevant dimensions of attainment for women. Second, since women are concentrated in relatively fewer occupations than men--especially those in the middle of the status hierarchy--estimation of effects of variables in attainment models for women may be more sensitive to how a particular status index ranks these occupations.

Tables 6 and 7 present standardized and metric regression coefficients (respectively) for simple recursive models of occupational attainment for men and women. The sample reflects a broad subset of the cohort of 1957 Wisconsin high school seniors that has been followed through 1975 by Professors William H. Sewell and Robert M. Hauser (Sewell and Hauser, 1980). We included all respondents who reported ever having a full-time job in the paid labor force and who had no missing data on social background, education, and current (or most recent) occupation in the paid labor force (N = 6991). Since our purpose is limited to the examination of the consequences of the choice of occupational metric, we limit our discussion of these tables to the relative effects of education and first job on current occupation. As in the earlier portions of this paper, we compare the 1950-basis DUNCAN, the PRESTIGE, and the several revised indexes of occupational socioeconomic status. Of the latter, we shall give special attention to the significance of using indexes estimated from male incumbents (viz., TSEI2).

Table 6 Standardized Regression Coefficients Relating Measures of Current Occupational Status to Indicators of Social Background, Schooling and First Job Status for Wisconsin Men and Women DUNCAN

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