Economic activity and occupation in the Pacific Islands: issues of census classification and analysis

The author discusses the census assessment of economic activity and occupation in the Pacific Island nations of Oceania. "In the Pacific Islands, subsistence and certain kinds of cash activities are often overlooked, and this omission tends to make vulnerable groups, especially women, less visible to planners and politicians. Some progress has been made in incorporating nonwage and noncash activities into recent classification systems used in censuses. One of the purposes of the new International Classification of Occupations...is to provide an improved system of classification for such activities.... Also needed in the Pacific are systems for providing more meaningful data collection and analysis on the relationship between individual and household activities."