PCCF+ and Socioeconomic Status Reference File

October 27, 2020

Question

I have a question from a Grad student using the PCCF+ and a file called the socioeconomic status reference file (.txt format) that should be available with the PCCF+ files.

The student found reference to this file in CIHI Measuring Health Inequalities. From the student’s email:

In the CIHI: Measuring Health Inequalities Toolkit, it says it is possible to avoid using SAS and just get this info from the PCCF. It says the following: To assign any income quintiles using PCCF, you would assign a DA to individuals in your dataset using the PCCF, and the socioeconomic status reference file (.txt format) available in the PCCF+ package to assign (the desired) income quintiles to DAs. This seems best for us because we already have a list of every DA and the stores assigned. 

I wasn’t able to find this file in the PCCF+ v7c files. Is this file available to us or is it something that only CIHI has access to?

Answer

I’ve spoken to the PCCF team and they’ve explained the following:

 

“I believe they may be naming it incorrectly – it’s not called a ‘socioeconomic status reference file’. We do provide area-based income quintiles as part of the standard output, if the user puts in their postal codes and uses the PCCF+ as suggested. There is information about that if they check the user guide.

 

They don’t need to first assign DAs to individuals. The PCCF+ will assign the DA and provide the income quintile at the same time.”

Socio-economic Rankings

Question

I am working with a researcher who is looking at immigrant integration in communities in Toronto and the Silicon Valley. She has collected data through interviews with the immigrants and want to create a socio-economic ranking with the data she has. However, she is wondering about that ranking being skewed by the education variable – if an immigrant received a University degree in their home country but after immigrating are working at a lower level job, the education variable would affect their socio-economic rank (possibly put them at a higher level). Is there a resource I can point her to that addresses this issue and how to deal with it?

Answer

The Longitudinal Immigration Database (IMDB) could serve to inform the relationship between education at landing (not published since 2010) and long-term economic outcomes (from tax files). For example, table 054-0002 shows “Income of immigrants, by world area, sex, immigrant admission category, education qualifications, knowledge of official languages, and landing year for tax year 2013”: http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/cansim/a26?lang=eng&retrLang=eng&id=0540002&&pattern=&stByVal=1&p1=1&p2=-1&tabMode=dataTable&csid=