Measuring Female Life Chances: The Variables and the Data

Abstract

The previous chapter showed how maternal height performed rather well in comparison to HORG at discriminating fertility and perinatal outcomes. Whilst that demonstration is interesting, the empirical argument for using and retaining the SCS as a classifier which discriminates is, of course, far more broad. Thus, the SCS has been used to discriminate not only fertility and infant mortality, but also a wide range of death and ill-health variables (see the excellent summary provided in the Black Report (publicly available earlier, Townsend and Davidson 1982); and the update by Whitehead (1987) for the Health Education Council), educational outcomes (Plowden, 1967) and habitual behaviours such as alcohol and tobacco consumption (Cox, Blaxter and Buckle et al., 1984). An illustration of the eclecticism of the measure is the compendium of social class differences edited by Reid and Wormald (1982).