Short Communication
Kuppuswamy’s Socioeconomic Scale-Update for July 2015 Charu Kohli*, Jugal Kishore**, Neeta Kumar*** Abstract Socioeconomic status of the individual and family has direct implication on health status, therefore its assessment is an important aspect in health research. From 1976, Kuppuswamy’s scale is an important tool to assess socio economic status of families residing in urban areas in India. The three aspects of Kuppuswamy’s scale are education, occupation of the head of the family, and total monthly family income. This scale needs to be revised at regular intervals in order to account for economic shuffle and changing inflation rate in the country and to revalidate its application in health research. This current update has been done using Consumer price index (industrial workers) as given by Labor Bureau, Government of India with base year 2001. This will be applicable for researches conducted in the year 2014 and 2015.
Keywords: Socio economic scale, Kuppuswamy scale, India. Background Socioeconomic status of the individual and family affects health status, therefore its assessment is an important aspect in health research. A number of socio
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economic status scales have been developed in India. Kuppuswamy’s scale was first introduced in the year 1976.1
Education of head of the family Score Professional or honors degree 7 Graduate or post graduate 6 Intermediate or post high school diploma 5 High school certificate 4 Middle school certificate 3 Primary school certificate 2 Illiterate 1 Occupation of head of the family Professional-Involved in decision making process, policy, execution e.g. Doctors, senior 10 administrative officers, senior lecturers, professors, college principles, advocates, estate planters, auditors, newspaper editors, expert musicians, architect, managing directors of industrial and business firms, managers etc. Semi-professional-Occupation requiring post high school or college education e.g. engineers, 6 lecturers, insurance inspectors etc. Clerical, shop-owner, farmer-Training in arithmetic, reading and writing, essentially 5 repetitive nature of work e.g. clerk, typist, accountant, shopkeeper, sales man, farm owner etc. Skilled worker-Complicated work requiring long training e.g. carpenter, mason, mechanic, 4 car driver, telephone operator etc. Semi-skilled worker-Work requiring some training e.g. assistant operator or electrician, 3 factory workers, laboratory attendant, bookbinder, waiter or bearer, etc. Unskilled worker-Work requiring neither education nor training and no independent 2 judgment e.g. peon, watchman, Durban, cleaner, sweeper, loader, helper, wood cutter, etc. Unemployed 1 Table 1.Kuppuswamy’s socio economic status scale
Resident, Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi. Prof. & Head, Dept. of Community Medicine, Vardhman Mahavir Medical College & Safdarjung Hospital, New Delhi. *** Scientist, Innovation and Translation Indian Council of Medical Research, New Delhi. Correspondence to: Dr Charu Kohli, Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi. E-mail Id:
[email protected] **
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Int. J. Preven. Curat. Comm. Med. 2015; 1(2)
Kohli C et al.
Since then, Kuppuswamy’s scale is an important tool to assess socio economic status of families residing in urban areas in India. The three aspects of Kuppuswamy’s scale are education, occupation of the head of the family, and total monthly family income as shown in Table 1.
Step 1: To Calculate the Price Index by New Base
Update for the Year 2014-2015
For example, if you have to calculate price index of year 1998 (a) after taking 2001 (b) as base year, then Price index by old base for 1998 = a = 405 Price index by old base for 2001 = b = 458 Price index by base for 2001 = 100 Price index by new base for 1998 = a/b X 100 = 405/458 X 100 = 88.42
Growing inflation and rapid social transformations lead to reduced validity of this tool. Thus, it needs to be revised at regular intervals in order to account for economic shuffle in the country and to revalidate its application in public health research. Last update was done by Kumar N et al. in the year 2012.2 This current update has been done using Consumer price index (industrial workers)-CPI (IW) as given by Labor Bureau, Government of India with base year 2001.3 This will be applicable for researches conducted in the year 2014 and 2015. This will also be a learning exercise for young researchers to understand how socio economic scales are updated. Kuppuswamy’s scale used price index for 1960 as 100, which increased to 296 in 1976 and 490 in the year 1982. The price indices for different years are given in Table 2 as given by Labor Bureau.3 Year Price index 1982 490-100 1998 405 2001 458-100 2014 246.9 July 2015 263 Table 2.Price indices for different years Now conversion factor needs to be calculated to account for change in the base value of 100 with years as in 1960, 1976 and recently in 2001. Following are the steps to update Kuppuswamy’s scale for the year2014 and July 2015.
If one wants to calculate the price index of year “a” taking year “b” as base year, then divide given year’s (a) price index by price index of the base year (b) i.e. a/b X 100
Step 2: To calculate the conversion factor for the year “c”, we have to divide the price index of year “c” by 88.42 Here, we will calculate conversion factor for the year 2014 and for July 2015 as: Price index for the year 2014 = 246.9 Conversion factor for the year 2014 = 246.9/88.42 = 2.79 Price index for July 2015 = 263 Conversion factor = 263/88.42 = 2.97
Step 3: Multiply the income categories As updated by Mishra D et al. in 1998 by conversion factor i.e. for the year for which the price index was calculated in the first step.4 The results are shown in Table 3. The above three scores on addition give final scoring which is then used to find socio economic status of the family as given in Table 4 (given at the end of the article).
Score 1998 2014 July 2015 12 = 13500 37665 40095 10 6750-13499 18833-37662 20047-40092 6 5050-6749 14090-18830 14998-20044 4 3375-5049 9416-14087 10024-14995 3 2025-3374 5650-9413 6014-10021 2 676-2024 1886-5647 2008-6011 1 = 675 1883 2005 Table 3.Update of Kuppuswamy’s scale for total monthly family income categories as per 2014 and July 2015
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ISSN: 2454-325X
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Int. J. Preven. Curat. Comm. Med. 2015; 1(2)
Drawbacks
socio economic scale of every family and is applicable to all.
Although this scale has wide applicability in research, but it does have lots of drawbacks. The occupation categories are not defined clearly which results in ambiguity. Similarly education classes are also not defined clearly as-which degree comes in which category. It fails to capture the individual education or occupation of the family which may significantly differ from head of household. A leader in the slum may not be having education or occupation but his social status may be much higher than what is determined from the scale. Family income in the scale is not true representation of classification because there are families where individual income is more than 2-3 lakhs per month and some earn more than 5 lakhs. Thus there is a need to develop a scale which is a true reflection of Category 1 2 3 4 5
Conflict of Interest: None References 1. Kuppuswamy B. Manual of socioeconomic status scale (urban). Delhi: Manasayan, 1981. 2. Kumar N, Gupta N, Kishore J. Kuppuswamy’s Socioeconomic Scale: Updating Income Ranges for the Year 2012. Indian J Public Health 2012; 56: 103-104. 3. Labour Bureau. Ministry of Labour, Government of India. Available from: http:// labourbureau.nic.in/ indnum.htm. 4. Mishra D, Singh HP. Kuppuswamy’s socioeconomic status scale-A revision. Indian J Pediatr 2003; 70(3): 273-74.
Score Socio Economic class 26-29 Upper 16-25 Upper middle 11-15 Lower middle 5-10 Upper lower
