This variable reflects the Standard International Socio-Economic Index of Occupational Status for all employed persons. The ISEI Index was developed in 1992 by Ganzeboom, De Graaf, Treiman, and De Leew based on information about income, education, and occupation. Technically, ISEI was created by scaling the ISCO-88 classification. The values for the variable range between 11 and 90. In contrast to the prestige scores of Ganzeboom and Treiman (1996) and Wegener (1988), ISEI is a measure of socio-economic status. Starting in SOEP-IS wave 2016, pgisei08 is derived from ISCO-88 scores that themselves are derived from ISCO-08 scores using the „derivescores“ STATA package (https://github.com/dirtyhawk/stata-derivescores). This recoding is derived from Ganzeboom‘s SPSS script iskoisei.sps. (http://www.harryganzeboom.nl/isco88/index.htm). Not all employed persons are asked the relevant input questions on an annual basis. Only those employed persons who changed jobs and first-time respondents were asked to provide up-to-date information.

Please also see occupational prestige scores (pgsiops08, pgmps08) and occupational class (pgegp08).

In the SOEP-IS, pgisei08 was first implemented in wave 2016 and is coded [-5] in all previous waves.