Occupational Classification in the North Atlantic Population Project

The impact of socio-economic status on net fertility during the historical fertility decline: A comparative analysis of Canada, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, and the USA

“…The main disadvantage with the NAPP census data used in this analysis is that a consistent classification scheme for class has yet to be fully implemented for all censuses. As detailed elsewhere (Roberts et al 2002), individuals' tasks, industry, and class of worker were not consistently recorded across censuses or even within censuses. For the earliest releases of the NAPP datasets, the project staff was forced to rely on a modified version of the HISCO system.…”

Accountants in late 19th century Britain: a spatial, demographic and occupational profile

“…Recent atAs suggested above, it is possible that the use of tempts to construct cross-national occupational the term accountant in the South West reflected classifications using census data reveal: 'The socio-cultural factors. It is possible that sectoral meaning-even within one language-of an appar-and regionalised occupational descriptions were ently straightforward occupational title can vary sustained through the trading links and business depending on the geographic, temporal, or indus-and social networks which were strong in this part trial context' (Roberts et al, 2003). This problem of Britain (Burt, 2003).…”

Mining microdata: Economic opportunity and spatial mobility in Britain and the United States, 1850–1881

“…We modified and extended the HISCO system to accommodate the additional detail available in the North Atlantic database. [61] To ensure that we coded the millions of occupations comparably across each country, we traded random samples of the occupation dictionary across countries, so that part of each country's occupations were independently coded by researchers in each other participating country. We then reconciled all differences of interpretation, which sometimes involved lengthy discussion and debate.…”

“…While earnings varied within occupations, there is a relatively stable ordering of earnings across occupations over time [62]. We classify our occupations initially into a modified version of the Historical International Standard Classification of Occupations coding scheme and then aggregate occupations into four categories to measure social class [58,59,61]. In this paper we combine occupations into four broader groupings for analysis: (1) white collar workers: a broad group encompassing professionals, clerical workers, and sales people, (2) farmers (3) skilled workers or supervisory workers, such as foremen or overseers, and (4) unskilled workers, encompassing various industrial sectors from service work to farming to manufacturing.…”