Human Capital and Social Position in Britain: Creating a Measure of Wage-Earning Potential from BHPS Data, 1991-2004

This study developed a continuously-scaled indicator of social position (the 'Essex Score'), which was estimated as individuals' potential wages in the labour market. The Essex Score was designed as a tool to investigate patterns of differentiation in life chances. It was constructed based on individuals' educational qualifications, recent experience in employment and non-employment, and occupational attainment, using data from the first 13 waves of the <i>British Household Panel Survey</i> (BHPS), which ran from 1991-2009, and also from the associated <i>British Household Panel Survey Combined Work-Life History Data, 1990-2003</i> study - see the <a href="http://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/series/?sn=200005" title="BHPS">BHPS series</a> webpage.<br>
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The Essex Score represents those embodied economic resources salient to individuals' participation in the labour market, equivalent to 'human capital' in economic literature, and sometimes indicated by social class categories in sociological research. It has advantages over other social class measures: being based on educational levels and on degrees of present and past attachment to the labour market, as well as on present or previous occupational membership, it covers the entire adult population irrespective of their employment status and employment history. Its continuous-level measurement also allows aggregation of scores from an individual to a household level, as well as the sensitive investigation of the determinants and consequences of changes in social position during the life course.<br>
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