current resources available to that individual (e.g., the income of a respondent who works part-time might appear artificially low if other adults in the household also work. Adjusting household income for the number of members being supported also increases the accuracy of the measure of current economic resources available to that individual. The economic resources available to each family member in a family of two that earns $40,000 annually differ from those available to members of a family of four that earns the same amount.

Poverty is an alternative indicator to income. Poverty can be determined using information on salary and wages and household size. The advantage of using poverty indicators is that, when expressed in relation to the official poverty line, they provide a measure of whether the household has the minimum resources for basic necessities. Although the official poverty measure underestimates the amount a family needs to meet basic necessities, it is standardized and can be compared across studies. While not commonly used, income can alternatively be expressed in terms of other economic metrics such as a living wage, which may better reflect how close or far families are from being able to afford basic necessities. It should also be noted that indicators such as income and poverty show greater fluctuations from year to year than an indicator such as wealth (Stevens, 1999). If a stable indicator of economic standing is desired, wealth may be preferable to income or poverty status.

Education is the most commonly measured indicator of socioeconomic position. Some have argued that it is the best indicator because of its stability over the lifecourse as well as the ease and accuracy for which these data can be collected (Winkleby et al., 1992). However, the fact that education is usually stable once a person has passed early adulthood may be one of its major weaknesses in that it does not capture the volatility that is present in the lives of many, especially the poor (e.g., Stevens, 1999). Moreover, it does not directly reflect the economic resources available to a person or household as income and wealth indicators do. Finally, use of education as the sole indicator of socioeconomic position is likely to yield significant residual confounding given the variability in income and wealth seen between racial and ethnic groups for the same levels of educational attainment (e.g., Oliver and Shapiro, 1995).

Despite these limitations, education is often the only SEP indicator available (e.g., in administrative data sources) and collection of education data is relatively easy and subject to little misclassification. These advantages should be kept in mind when options are very limited in terms of survey or interview length.