Socio-economic group

The UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) defines socio-economic groups as groups ‘derived from occupation, employment status and size of establishment’. When used in the context of longevity, it is any grouping by social or economic factors that could lead to homogeneous groups with different longevity experience.

Using different covariates to measure baseline longevity differently for people with different characteristics, such as the method used by Club Vita in the VitaCurves model, is a way of allowing for socio-economic groups in baseline longevity modeling. Allowing for socio-economic groups when analyzing trends requires a larger set of data than that needed for baseline analysis. In 2014, together with UK’s Pension and Lifetime Saving Association (PLSA), then, the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF), Club Vita developed the VitaSegments socio-economic groups (3 for men and 2 for women) and now regularly publish the development of longevity improvements for these different groups.

The classification system used for the UK census is the national Statistics Socio-economic classification (NS-SEC), which uses eight occupationally based classes designed to cover the whole adult population including students and those who have never worked:

1. Higher managerial and professional occupations (e.g. doctors, lawyers)
2. Lower managerial and professional occupations (e.g. teachers, nurses)
3. Intermediate occupations (e.g. firemen, airline cabin crew)
4. Small employers and own account workers (e.g. self-employed builders, shopkeepers)
5. Lower supervisory and technical occupations (e.g. train drivers, foremen, supervisors)
6. Semi-routine occupations (e.g. shop assistants, postmen, call center workers)
7. Routine occupations (e.g. bus drivers, waitresses, cleaners)
8. Never worked and long-term unemployed

Socio-economic group is also sometimes referred to as ‘social class’.