IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/somere/v54y2025i2p355-396.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Occupational Percentile Rank: A New Method for Constructing a Socioeconomic Index of Occupational Status

Author

Listed:
  • Xi Song
  • Yu Xie

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a method for constructing an occupation-based socioeconomic index that can easily incorporate changes in occupational structure. The resulting index is the occupational percentile rank for a given cohort, based on contemporaneous information pertaining to educational composition and the number of workers at the occupation level. An occupation may experience an increase or decrease in its occupational rank due to changes in relative sizes and educational compositions across occupations. The method is flexible in dealing with changes in occupational and educational measurements over time. Applying the method to U.S. history from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day, we derive the index using IPUMS U.S. Census microdata from 1850 to 2000 and the American Community Surveys (ACSs) from 2001 to 2018. Compared to previous occupational measures, this new measure takes into account occupational status evolvement caused by long-term secular changes in occupational size and educational composition. The resulting percentile rank measure can be easily merged with social surveys and administrative data that include occupational measures based on the U.S. Census occupation codes and crosswalks.

Suggested Citation

  • Xi Song & Yu Xie, 2025. "Occupational Percentile Rank: A New Method for Constructing a Socioeconomic Index of Occupational Status," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 54(2), pages 355-396, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:somere:v:54:y:2025:i:2:p:355-396
    DOI: 10.1177/00491241231207914
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00491241231207914
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/00491241231207914?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:somere:v:54:y:2025:i:2:p:355-396. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.