Compare methods

	Duncan Socioeconomic Index	Status Attainment Model
Field	Sociology	Sociology
Family	Process / pipeline	Regression model
Year of origin	1961	1967
Originator	Otis Dudley Duncan	Peter Blau & Otis Dudley Duncan
Type	Composite occupational status score from education and income	Recursive path model of occupational attainment
Seminal source	Duncan, O. D. (1961). A socioeconomic index for all occupations. In A. J. Reiss Jr. (Ed.), Occupations and Social Status (pp. 109–138). Free Press of Glencoe.	Blau, P. M., & Duncan, O. D. (1967). The American Occupational Structure. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN: 978-0-471-08035-0
Aliases	Duncan SEI, socioeconomic index for occupations, SEI score, Duncan's index	Blau-Duncan model, basic status attainment model, occupational attainment path model, socioeconomic life-cycle model
Related	5	5
Summary	The Duncan Socioeconomic Index (SEI), created by Otis Dudley Duncan in 1961, assigns each occupation a socioeconomic status score derived from the education and income of its incumbents. Duncan calibrated the score by regressing the prestige ratings of a limited set of occupations on the percentage of incumbents with high education and high income, then used that equation to predict a status score for every occupation in the census. The SEI thus extends a small number of prestige ratings to the entire occupational structure on a 0–100 scale.	The status attainment model, introduced by Peter Blau and Otis Dudley Duncan in The American Occupational Structure (1967), is a recursive path model that explains an individual's occupational status from their social origins and intervening achievements. In its basic form, father's education and father's occupation influence the respondent's education and first job, which in turn shape current occupational status. By decomposing the link between origins and destinations into direct and education-mediated indirect paths, it established that education is the principal channel through which advantage is transmitted across generations.