The generic definition of cohort, i.e., an aggregate of individuals who experience a similar event within the same time interval, is invoked to derive two cohort-membership groups for each of two samples. Subjects were 1203 and 998 white, middle-aged males who participated in the Institute for Social Research panel study of income dynamics. This exploratory study investigated the relative explanatory power of birth-cohort membership, occupational-cohort membership, and occupational status for a set of four social psychological dependent variables. Occupational-cohort membership was one of the two stronger contributors to the explanation of the variance for each of the dependent variables.
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