Mary G. Powers - Measures of Socioeconomic Status: Current Issues

Current Issues

AAAS Selected Symposia Series

First published in 1982 by Westview Press

Published in 2021 by Routledge

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Copyright 1982 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science

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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 82-50647

ISBN 0-86531-395-4

ISBN 13: 978-0-3670-1931-0 (hbk)

ISBN 13: 978-0-3671-6918-3 (pbk)

DOI: 10.4324/9780429049170

Any study of social stratification, social mobility, occupation change, or public welfare uses some index to measure socioeconomic status or occupational prestige. This book presents for the first time a collection of papers by the major contributors to the development of such indexes. A state-of-the-art review, the book provides a basis for comparing the various approaches to understanding social stratification and social mobility and to evaluating some of the current controversies surrounding these approaches. The authors discuss and assess measures of socioeconomic status developed in the United States and Canada over the last three decades, covering occupational status scores and multivariate indexes of socioeconomic status derived from census data as well as measures of occupational prestige derived from survey responses. They pay particular attention to the implications of the increased labor-force participation of women for current measures of occupational status and prestige.

The AAAS Selected Symposia Series was begun in 1977 to provide a means for more permanently recording and more widely disseminating some of the valuable material which is discussed at the AAAS Annual National Meetings. The volumes in this Series are based on symposia held at the Meetings which address topics of current and continuing significance, both within and among the sciences, and in the areas in which science and technology impact on public policy. The Series format is designed to provide for rapid dissemination of information, so the papers are not typeset but are reproduced directly from the camera-copy submitted by the authors. The papers are organized and edited by the symposium arrangers who then become the editors of the various volumes. Most papers published in this Series are original contributions which have not been previously published, although in some cases additional papers from other sources have been added by an editor to provide a more comprehensive view of a particular topic. Symposia may be reports of new research or reviews of established work, particularly work of an interdisciplinary nature, since the AAAS Annual Meetings typically embrace the full range of the sciences and their societal implications.

WILLIAM D. CAREY

Executive Officer

American Association for

the Advancement of Science

Mary G. Powers, a professor in the departments of sociology and anthropology at Fordham University, has specialized in the study of social stratification social demography and urban ecology. She has done extensive research on socioeconomic and occupational status measurement, including stability and change of scores, variations in status level among ethnic groups, the relationship of socioeconomic status to fertility, and changes in occupational status scores which result when women are included in the data base. She is currently chair of the Census Advisory Committee on Population Statistics, and she is a former member of the board of directors of the Population Association of America.

Monica Boyd, a demographer, is associate professor of sociology and anthropology at Carleton University in Ottawa. She has done research on sex differences in occupational attainment, income, and labor markets, and on the socioeconomic status of separated, divorced, and immigrant women, and she is the author of a forthcoming book, Ascription and Achievement: Studies in Mobility and Status Attainment (with J. Goyder et al.). A former member of the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women, she is presently on the board of directors of the Population Association of America and a councilor of the Canadian Population Society.