Fujihara and Wong RC28.pdf

OSF draft

The replication materials are available at the following OSF repository (anonymous view-only link for peer review): https://osf.io/96ajy/overview?view_only=979f4991bc594002b90c54295e4ebfba

Occupational Scales for Japanese society

Socio-Economic Index (SEI) and Social Status Index (SSI) for Japanese society.

References

• Fujihara, Sho. 2020. "Socio-Economic Standing and Social Status in Contemporary Japan: Scale Constructions and Their Applications." European Sociological Review 36(4):548–561. DOI: 10.1093/esr/jcaa010
• Song, Xi, and Yu Xie. 2023. "Occupational Percentile Rank: A New Method for Constructing a Socioeconomic Index of Occupational Status." Sociological Methods & Research. doi:10.1177/00491241231207914.
• Oesch, Daniel, Oliver Lipps, Roujman Shahbazian, Erik Bihagen, and Katy Morris. 2025. "Occupational Earning Potential: A New Measure of Social Hierarchy in Europe and the US." European Sociological Review. doi:10.1093/esr/jcaf035.

Data Files

JESS (Employment Status Survey / Population Census)

File	Description
JESS_232_sei_ssi_v1.0.csv	SEI and SSI for 231 occupations (v1.0)
JESS_sei_ssi_v1.0.csv	SEI and SSI, detailed version (v1.0)
JESS_occupational_scales_v0.3.csv	Gender-Specific SEI (MSEI/FSEI) and other scales (v0.3)

Note: The original classification has 232 occupation codes, but code 232 ("Workers not classifiable by occupation") is excluded from scale estimation, resulting in 231 occupations. MSEI and FSEI are NA for occupations where one gender has too few workers for reliable estimation (2 occupations for MSEI, 9 for FSEI).

SSM (Social Stratification and Social Mobility Survey)

File	Description
SSM_sei_ssi_v1.0.csv	SEI and SSI for SSM occupational categories (v1.0)
SSM_occupational_scales.csv	Gender-Specific SEI and other scales for SSM categories

Note: SSM occupational categories are mapped from JESS codes via a crosswalk. MSEI/FSEI are NA for categories that map exclusively to gender-sparse occupations.

Variables in JESS_occupational_scales_v0.3.csv

Variable	Description
occ	Occupation code
title	Occupation title
prop	Proportion of workers
prop_women	Proportion of women
Education & Earnings
Education	Mean years of education of workers in the occupation
Earnings	Mean log earnings of workers in the occupation
SEI Scores
TSEI	Total SEI (combined)
MSEI	Male-specific SEI
FSEI	Female-specific SEI
TSEI_E, MSEI_E, FSEI_E	Education component
TSEI_I, MSEI_I, FSEI_I	Income component
Other Scales
Prestige	Occupational prestige
Status	Status index / CAMSIS
DSEI	Duncan-type SEI
OPR	Occupational Percentile Rank (Song and Xie 2023)
OEP	Occupational Earnings Percentile
SIOPS	Standard International Occupational Prestige Scale
ISEI	International Socio-Economic Index
ICAMS	International CAMSIS
GOEP	Global Occupational Earnings Percentile (Oesch et al. 2025)

External Scale Sources

• SIOPS: Treiman, Donald J. 1977. Occupational Prestige in Comparative Perspective. Academic Press.
• ISEI: Ganzeboom, Harry B.G., Paul M. De Graaf, and Donald J. Treiman. 1992. "A Standard International Socio-Economic Index of Occupational Status." Social Science Research 21(1):1-56.
• ICAMS: Lambert, Paul S., and Erik Bihagen. 2014. "Using Occupation-Based Social Classifications." Work, Employment and Society 28(3):481-494.

Usage

library(tidyverse)
library(patchwork)

# Load the data
d <- read_csv("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ShoFujihara/OccupationalScales/master/JESS_232_sei_ssi_v1.0.csv")

# Distribution plot (density curves)
p1 <- d |>
  select(sei, ssi) |>
  pivot_longer(cols = everything(), names_to = "index", values_to = "value") |>
  mutate(index = toupper(index)) |>
  ggplot(aes(x = value, fill = index)) +
  geom_density(alpha = 0.4) +
  scale_fill_manual(values = c("SEI" = "#1F77B4", "SSI" = "#FF7F0E")) +
  labs(title = "Distribution of SEI and SSI", x = "Score", y = "Density", fill = NULL) +
  theme_minimal() +
  theme(legend.position = "bottom")

# Scatter plot (SEI vs SSI)
p2 <- d |>
  ggplot(aes(x = sei, y = ssi)) +
  geom_point(alpha = 0.6) +
  geom_abline(slope = 1, intercept = 0, linetype = "dashed", color = "gray50") +
  labs(title = "SEI vs SSI", x = "SEI", y = "SSI") +
  theme_minimal()

# Combine plots
p1 + p2 +
  plot_annotation(title = "Socio-Economic Index (SEI) and Social Status Index (SSI)")

The figure below is generated by R/sei_ssi_overview.R.

Changelog

2026-02-13

• Removed JESS_occupational_scales_v0.1.csv (superseded by v0.3; v0.1 had 13 missing occupation codes due to drop_na() on MSEI/FSEI)
• Fixed SSM_occupational_scales.csv: updated from 183 to 196 rows (13 SSM codes were dropped due to same drop_na() issue)
• Note on NA values: MSEI/FSEI are NA (not dropped) for occupations where one gender has insufficient sample size

2025-12

• Added JESS_occupational_scales_v0.3.csv with Gender-Specific SEI, OPR, OEP, GOEP, and other scales (232 rows, all codes)

2024

• Initial release: JESS_232_sei_ssi_v1.0.csv, JESS_sei_ssi_v1.0.csv, SSM_sei_ssi_v1.0.csv