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- Occupation
- social class
- social mechanisms
- occupational epidemiology
- epidemiology
- mental health
- sociology
- psychology
- public health
The recent paper by Ferrario et al 1 as well as the follow-up comment by Kawada2 contributes to a persisting confusion in occupational and social epidemiology, namely, the conflation of the constructs of ‘occupation’ and ‘social class’. Clarifying this confusion begins with acknowledging that occupation and social class are two distinct constructs that lead to different social stratification hypotheses, social mechanisms and intervention strategies with regard to health inequalities.3–5 While occupation refers to the technical aspects of work (eg, a taxicab driver transports passengers between locations, a lawyer practices the system of rules of conduct established by society), social class refers mostly to …
Footnotes
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Competing interests None.
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Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.