Three new occupational status indices for England and Wales, 1800-1939

Using a database of 1.6m marriages, 1837-1939, and a genealogy of 424,000 people 1600-2021, we estimate three new male occupational status indices for England 1800-1939. The first of these indices, CCC-HISCO, re-estimates the HISCAM-GB index, using 30 times as much data. The second new index, CCC, uses the same association methodology behind HISCAM and CAMSIS to assign status, but employs a richer occupation classification than in HISCO-GB. The third index, CCC2, links this richer set of occupations to six measures of education and wealth, using principal component analysis. The close correlation between the CCC and CCC2 indices shows that the HISCAM association methodology generates true occupational status indices, rather than purely social proximity measures. All three new indices perform better than the existing HISCAM indices, by the metric of the father-son status correlation. These new indices all imply much less social mobility 1800-1939 than the current HISCAM indices.