Harry Ganzeboom’s

Tools for deriving occupational status measures from ISCO-68

Click here for ISCO-08

 

Click here for ISCO-88

ISCO-68 stands for the 1968 International Standard Classification of Occupations maintained by the International Labour Office. ISCO-68 has been an extremely useful instrument for harmonizing detailed and crude national occupational classifications to a common key. In 1990, ISCO-68 was replaced by a 1988 edition of the ISCO, which we designate ISKO-88.  However, ISCO-68 is in some ways preferable to its successor. In particular, it provides better distinctions among small self-employed and agricultural workers than does ISKO-88.  Moreover, many surveys rely upon national census classifications that often closely follow ISCO categories, which before the 1990/91 round of censuses meant ISCO-68. In such instances, mapping national occupation codes to ISCO-68 categories generally provides a better fit than mapping them into ISKO-88 categories. 

The ISMF project thus uses both ISCO-68 and ISKO-88 as tools for standardizing occupations. The ISMF-project provides the following conversions for public use:

  • Conversions of national classifications into ISCO-68 (as well as ISKO-88)
  • Conversions of ISCO-68 (and ISKO-88) into internationally standardized measures of occupational status (prestige, socio-economic status, and EGP classes).
  • Conversions of ISCO-68 and ISKO-88 into one another.

Please cite use of our conversion tools as: Ganzeboom, Harry B.G.;Treiman, Donald J., “International Stratification and Mobility File: Conversion Tools.” Amsterdam: Department of Social Research Methodology, http://home.fsw.vu.nl/hbg.ganzeboom/ismf. <Date of last revision>.