Socioeconomic Status

Measuring SES in Older Populations

In general, SES refers to an individual's access to, or possession of, economic and social resources; that is, the individual's property, power, and prestige in his or her social setting. The most commonly used measures of adult SES are the individual's education, income, and occupation, but researchers have also examined alternative measures such as wealth (total assets), poverty status, neighborhood-level SES, and childhood SES.

Education is measured numerically as number of years of schooling completed or categorically in terms of specific educational credentials (e.g., high school degree, college degree). Annualincome may be assessed for the individual or household and typically includes all sources, including wages, investments, and pensions. Occupations are usually grouped into broad classes such as professional/managerial, clerical, skilled labor, and unskilled labor. Alternatively, occupations may be assigned prestige scores based on social opinion surveys regarding the relative amounts of prestige associated with specific jobs. Wealth measures place a total value on all assets or all liquid assets or, alternatively, may indicate ownership or value of specific assets (e.g., home, cars, savings, investments). Poverty status is a dichotomous indicator of whether the individual's annual family income [Page 532]exceeds federal poverty standards (based on number and ages of family members). Neighborhood SES is assessed by aggregate measures such as median household income and percentage of household heads with college degrees. Measures ofchildhood SES include information on parents' education levels and occupations or the individual's subjective assessment of his or her family's relative social standing.

Education is the most widely used SES indicator in health studies of older populations, in part because it is relatively simple to obtain. Education has an additional advantage in that it typically does not change past young adulthood and thus causally exists prior to the development of most health problems. Income and occupation measures are more problematic to use in older populations because postretirement conditions might not adequately reflect the economic resources available to seniors. Furthermore, current status measures of income and occupation do not assess conditions in younger and middle adulthood when chronic diseases are beginning to develop. Measures of wealth have been used more frequently in recent studies of health and aging. Wealth indicators give a broader assessment of the material and financial resources owned by older, especially retired individuals, and they incorporate information on economic status during the preretirement years.

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