A Socio-Economic Index for Occupational Stratification in Argentina: With Insights for Comparative Research

This paper develops a country-specific Argentinean Socio-Economic Index (ARSEI) to measure the status of occupations in Argentina, using the 2015 Encuesta Permanente de Hogares (sample size = 50,947). The ARSEI scale is developed in an indirect-effect model that conceives of occupational status as an optimal scaling of detailed occupations that maximizes the indirect effect of education on earnings mediated by occupation, and by corollary minimizes the direct effect of education on earnings. The procedure followed is independently applied for Código Nacional de Ocupaciones 2001 (CNO), the five-digit Argentinean occupational classification, and the International Standard Classification of Occupations, ISCO-08. To test the measurement quality of ARSEI, we use the 2021 Estructura Social de la Argentina y Políticas Públicas Durante la Pandemia por COVID-19 dataset (sample size = 5239). Utilizing a Multi-Trait Multi-Method model, our findings indicate that ARSEI performs similarly for CNO and ISCO-08. While both classifications produce some random error (unreliability) in measuring intergenerational reproduction, systematic error (invalidity) is negligible. Our results suggest that CNO-based ARSEI performs slightly better than the ISCO-based ARSEI. However, the international ISEI index outperforms both ARSEI versions, lending support to Treiman’s hypothesis that occupational stratification is basically constant across time and place. Our contribution to the research on the comparative measurement of occupational status is twofold: (1) comparing a country-specific classification to an international one, and (2) comparing a country-specific occupational scaling to an international scaling.