How can I link occ1995 in IHIS to occupation codes in census or ACS?

Hi! I want to link the occ1995 in the IHIS to occupation codes in census or ACS, but they don’t seem comparable. “The construction of OCC1995 is based on the work done by the IPUMS-USA project, which harmonized Census Bureau occupation classifications from 1950 to present, using the 1990 Census Bureau occupational classification scheme as a standard. Based on a series of technical papers and crosswalks that provide detailed analyses on how the occupation coding scheme for each census year differed from the scheme used in the previous census year, the IPUMS staff traced the proportion of each occupation as it broke down into more specific occupations or as it was combined with others into a more aggregated occupation.” Could I get the coding scheme to link the occ1995 in the IHIS to occupation in census or ACS?

While both the NHIS and Census/ACS collect detailed occupation information, the codes in IPUMS-USA are more thorough than those in IHIS. Unfortunately, this added layer of specificity can not be created with the IHIS data. Even though the occupation codes provided in OCC1995were created based on the model developed by the IPUMS-USA team for OCC1990, they were not made to be linked to each other. The codes found in OCC1995 are the most detailed occupational codes possible for harmonization across time in IHIS.

That being said, if you don’t mind losing the specificity of these variables, it is possible to group codes for both variables into their larger categories. For example, you could combine OCC1990 codes 044-059 (Engineers) and compare it to the combined OCC1995 codes 0211-0213 (Engineers).

I hope this helps.