Socioeconomic status and health at midlife: A comparison of educational attainment with occupation based indicators

PURPOSE: Educational attainment is a widely used indicator of socioeconomic status (SES) in health studies. However, little is known about its relatio nship to health relative to measures of occupational standing. This study d irectly compared education with an array of occupational measures-including social class-in relation to health. METHODS: The Wisconsin Longitudinal Study collected self-reported health da ta from a sample of 6875 Wisconsin high school graduates aged 53-54 in 1992 -1993. The analysis regressed overall health, physical symptoms, and medica l conditions on socioeconomic indicators, using logistic regression. RESULTS: Associations of health outcomes with occupational standing net of educational attainment are mainly weak or non existent. "Occupational educa tion" is the only indicator to have a strong association with health net of education in analyses of both men and women. CONCLUSIONS: While occupation is sometimes an important mechanism linking e ducation and health, control for the overall relation between SES and healt h may not require measures of occupational standing when educational attain ment is measured well. However, the present findings are limited to non-His panic white high school graduates from Wisconsin at ages 53-54. Ann Epidemi ol 2001;11:75-84. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.