ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book addresses the conception of social stratification as a system of social structures of consequential inequality that are enduring and reproduced. It reviews practice in the use of occupational data as a means to indicate social stratification position. Lambert and Bihagen discuss a range of methodological issues associated with the interpretation of existing measures of social stratification, leading them to critique the assumed link between theoretical concepts in stratification, and the empirical properties of the scales and classifications. The book provides one of the first such comparative analyses of labour market earnings and ethnicity in the United Kingdom and United States by creating harmonised data for the two countries. The analysis draw upon data from the General Household Survey and Labour market survey in the UK and the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series in the US.
