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• Employment relations are the basis for new UK official class measure
  Mel Bartley
  Published on: 14 August 2002

• Published on: 14 August 2002

  Employment relations are the basis for new UK official class measure

  • Mel Bartley, Professor of Medical Sociology

  Dear Editor

  Professor Muntaner's cricism of the neglect of power relations in research on health inequality is well timed. The 2001 Census of England and Wales has used as its social classification a new measure: the National Statistics Socio-economic classification (NS-SEC). This measure has an explicit theoretical basis in the relations and conditions of employment. It therefore distinguishes those who own pr...

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  Dear Editor

  Professor Muntaner's cricism of the neglect of power relations in research on health inequality is well timed. The 2001 Census of England and Wales has used as its social classification a new measure: the National Statistics Socio-economic classification (NS-SEC). This measure has an explicit theoretical basis in the relations and conditions of employment. It therefore distinguishes those who own property and businesses from those who do not, the self employed with and without employees, and employees with different degrees of power over their own work and that of others. It makes no reference to individual characteristics such as skill or education, nor to status or prestige.

  Publications are now emerging that use this measure, for example, in examining inequalities in health.

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  Conflict of Interest:
  None declared.

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