Socio-professional Status

The pre-retirement socio-professional category (SPC) contains layers of informa-tion that need to be disentangled carefully: reflecting a stratificainforma-tion of some sort, though without an underlying linear hierarchy, its being built on educational attain-ment, leadership position and employment status creates the basis for a strong cor-relation with financial assets. In the context of this research, we are interested in how former socio-professional status might shape people’s perspective on their eco-nomic quality of life. However, at the bivariate stage of the analysis it is not possible to distinguish between the effects of financial means (for which SPC is a proxy- indicator) and how a certain social standing shows up in the perception of needs and expectations with regard to living standard. What can be ascertained is that this variable focuses more on capturing the ‘expectations’ than the ‘needs’ aspect of our model component.

The most frequent SPC in our sample population is ‘top executives and academic professions’ (36%) followed by skilled manual workers (17%), non-manual work-ers (16%) and intermediary professions (15%), then the self-employed and farmwork-ers (11%) and lastly the unskilled workers (5%). When looking at the distribution of

vulnerability within each of these socio-professional categories, the Objective Measure reflects the expected gradient, with ‘unskilled workers’ representing the category with the highest prevalence of income-poverty (43%), followed at some distance by ‘self-employed and farmers’ and ‘skilled-manual workers’ (26% and 25%). The very high rate of income-poverty among the ‘self-employed’ might be related to the flipside of the previously mentioned aspect of the Swiss legal frame-work for old age provisions: because self-employed individuals are exempted from the mandatory contribution to occupational benefit plans (2nd pillar), those who were not able to save enough money during their professionally active lives tend to have a meager income in old age.

Moving on to the Self-Assessed Measure, the share of vulnerability among the

‘unskilled’ is much lower than for the Objective Measure, but still at 27%, followed by ‘skilled manual’ with 24%. These two socio-professional categories record also the highest share of vulnerability according to the Perceived Measure (30% and 29%). The vulnerability rates among the higher-ranking SPCs, ‘top executives and academic professions’ and ‘intermediary professions’, are noticeably higher for the subjective measures compared to the monetary measure (Table 15.1).

For all three measures, the association with former SPC is statistically signifi-cant, Cramér’s V indicating a moderately strong effect size. The Objective Measure has by far the strongest association with former socio-professional status (V = 0.29, χ² (5) = 138.4; p < 0.001).

The distribution of socio-professional categories by vulnerability type (exclud-ing majority type AAA) is shown in Appendix 15.1. We will first consider the most frequent SPC within each vulnerability type: the largest proportion of type BBB is made up of former ‘skilled manual’ workers (34.6%); this SPC is also ranking as the most important category within types BBA, BAB, ABB and BAA.  This socio- professional group is clearly overrepresented in comparison to its relative size within the total sample (17%). For types ABA and AAB, ‘top executives’ are the dominating socio-professional group.

Table 15.1 Sample distribution by socio-professional status and measures of economic vulnerability

Socio-professional Category (SPC)

Sample distribution obj_ev sa_ev perc_ev

n % % vulnerable within SPC

Top executives/academic prof. 583 36.1 6.5 8.2 12.7

Self-employed/farmers 181 11.2 26.0 16.6 21.0

Intermed.Prof. 244 15.1 5.7 9.0 13.9

Skilled non-manual 252 15.6 14.3 15.1 15.1

Skilled manual 276 17.1 25.4 24.3 29.4

Unskilled 77 4.8 42.9 27.3 29.9

Total 1613 100.0 14.8 14.2 17.8

Cramér’s V 0.29 0.19 0.17

χ^2 (5) 138.4 58.3 48.1

p < 0.001 < 0.001 0.001

181

With regard to the distribution of vulnerability types within socio-professional categories, the mode is most frequently found in type BAA, namely for the follow-ing categories: liberal, non-manual, skilled manual and unskilled workers. The association of SPC and the economic Vulnerability Typology (AAA included) is statistically significant (p < 0.001) and of a moderate effect size (Cramér’s V = 0.15).

At this stage, it is helpful to consider the income levels that are typical for each socio-professional category in order to be able to extract as much information as possible in view of our hypotheses. Table 15.2 shows the percentage distribution of income for each socio-professional category.¹ Let us recall that both variables are located at the household level, income having been rendered equivalent based on household size and, in the case of married couples, the highest SPC having been extended to both spouses.

It becomes obvious that the professional categories only partially correspond to a ranking in income: in terms of monthly income, top executive are clearly the wealthiest professional category, followed by intermediary professions, then non- manual workers and, on rank 4, the formerly self-employed and farmers. As expected, skilled manual and unskilled workers conclude the ranking. Consequently, we rediscover the pattern of those SPC that record the greatest shares among type BAA: the self-employed, non-manual, skilled manual and unskilled workers. These individuals seem to be unaware of their objective vulnerability and therefore they neither experience economic strain nor are they easily stressed because of it. In order to test whether the discrepancy between objective and subjective measure-ment angles of this particular constellation is more frequent among respondents who have had a small income during their lives, we will have to make a more nuanced analysis later.

1 For facilitating the interpretation the most frequent income class within each SPC is underlined with a double line, the second most frequent income class is underlined with a simple line.

Table 15.2 Percentage distribution of income within each socio-professional category

Socio-professional category

Monthly household income

< 2400 2400–3600 3600–4800 4800–6000 > 6000 Total

1. Top executive/academic 6.5 11.5 27.3 24.4 30.4 100

2. Self-empl./farmers 26.0 19.3 27.1 12.2 15.5 100

3. Intermed.Prof. 5.7 20.9 41.0 23.4 9.0 100

4. Non-manual 14.3 19.4 36.5 20.2 9.5 100

5. Skilled manual 25.4 33.7 35.9 4.0 1.1 100

6. Unskilled 42.9 31.2 23.4 1.3 1.3 100

Total 14.8 19.8 32.1 17.6 15.8 100

15.1 Socio-professional Status