[Assessing social inequality in microcensus data and German national health examination survey]

To analyse the impact of social inequality on health and illness public health officials in Germany request for more data on socio-demographic indicators in official population statistics at Federal and State level. The aim of the study was to examine whether the national sample census Microcensus is suitable for scaling social inequality. For this purpose, coding instructions for calculating social strata index by Winkler were applied to databases of the Microcensus. The results were compared with the German Health Survey, because social data of this survey are already scaled according to the coding instruction for social strata index by Winkler. Data analyses were based on subgroups of North Rhine-Westphalia originated from national samples of Microcensus and German Health Survey. For index indicators "education" and "income" coding structure was transferred to databases of Microcensus without any problems. For index indicator "occupational status" occupational groups were less comparable. This refers to the classification of the occupational status of formerly employed people. However this limitation applies also to employees because the model for "occupational status" is assessed only on a four-year basis. From a methodical point of view it seems to be a problem that "household" has a different meaning in the index by Winkler and Microcensus and is only partly transferable to Microcensus databases. Additionally, identification of the main income earner of the household proved extremely difficult. Therefore, at the present conceptional stage of Microcensus it seems appropriate to classify occupational status as an individual criterion.