Occupational class and the probability of long-term limiting illness

The central purpose of this paper is to investigate, using data from the Sample of Anonymised Records of the 1991 Census for Britain on over 80,000 male and over 75,000 female employees between the ages of 41 and 67, the relationship between occupational class and health inequality. The specific aim of the investigation is to answer two questions. First, after controlling for non-class attributes, what was the contribution of occupational class to differences between the classes in the proportion of persons in them with a long-term limiting illness? Answer: a lot or very little depending on the classes that are being compared and whether the comparison is for men or for women. Second, how much of the inequality in the distribution, over the persons in the sample, in their probabilities of suffering from a long-term limiting illness was due to inequality between persons in the same occupation class (within-class inequality) and how much was due to inequality between persons in different occupational classes (between-class inequality)? Answer: for men, approximately one-quarter and, for women, approximately one-fifth of overall inequality in health status was the result of differences in occupational class. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.