HISCLASS Social Class Coding

HISCLASS, the Historical International Social Class Scheme, converts HISCO-coded occupations into a hierarchy of social classes designed for cross-national, long-run historical analysis. Where HISCO answers 'what occupation?', HISCLASS answers 'what social standing?'. Developed by van Leeuwen and Maas, it sorts occupations along four theoretically grounded dimensions: the skill level of the work, whether it is manual or non-manual, whether it involves supervision of others, and whether it lies in the agricultural sector. Combining these yields a twelve-class scheme that can be collapsed into seven or five classes for coarser analysis. Because it is derived deterministically from HISCO codes and status modifiers, HISCLASS gives historians a replicable, internationally comparable measure of class that travels across the same span of languages and centuries as HISCO itself. It has become the standard input for historical studies of inequality, marriage patterns, and intergenerational social mobility.