Compare methods

	Status Attainment Model	Duncan Socioeconomic Index
Field	Sociology	Sociology
Family	Regression model	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1967	1961
Originator	Peter Blau & Otis Dudley Duncan	Otis Dudley Duncan
Type	Recursive path model of occupational attainment	Composite occupational status score from education and income
Seminal source	Blau, P. M., & Duncan, O. D. (1967). The American Occupational Structure. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN: 978-0-471-08035-0	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.
Aliases	Blau-Duncan model, basic status attainment model, occupational attainment path model, socioeconomic life-cycle model	Duncan SEI, socioeconomic index for occupations, SEI score, Duncan's index
Related	5	5
Summary	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.	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.