The New Zealand Socioeconomic Index: developing and validating an occupationally-derived indicator of socio-economic status |
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Authors: | Davis P McLeod K Ransom M Ongley P Pearce N Howden-Chapman P |
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Affiliation: | Department of Community Health, School of Medicine, University of Auckland, New Zealand. pb.davis@auckland.ac.nz |
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Abstract: | OBJECTIVE: Following revision of the international standard classification (ISCO88), to update and validate on health data an occupationally derived indicator of socio-economic status (SES) adapted to changing occupational and demographic conditions. METHOD: The development of the New Zealand Socioeconomic Index (NZSEI) is based on a 'returns to human capital' model of the stratification process and uses data from the 1991 New Zealand Census (n = 1,051, 926) to generate scores for 97 occupational groups. The construct validation of the scale is carried out on data from the 1992-93 nationwide Household Health Survey (n = 3,000) using three health indicators (self-assessed health, cigarette smoking, general practitioner visits). RESULTS: In general, the results are consistent with expected socio-economic patterns drawn from the literature for the three indicators. CONCLUSIONS: While further work is required on a number of methodological and conceptual issues, the NZSEI provides a robust, standardised and internationally comparable occupational scale of SES for both males and females in either full- or part-time employment. IMPLICATIONS: The NZSEI can be used on routinely collected occupational data. It has a clear conceptual rationale, updates existing SES scales, and provides a link to international standards in SES and occupational classification. |
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