Measuring Social Classwww.educationforum.co.uk

Class Systems

Class is the stratification system common to most modern industrial societies.

People can be grouped in terms of their occupation, income and wealth.

People located within recognizable social classes almost always also share similar levels of education, status and power.

How are Class Systems Different?

Class systems differ from other stratification systems such as caste or feudalism in the following ways:

1. Based on economic factors not religion, law or race

2. Tend to be open not closed3. Borders between classes are fuzzy when

compared to caste or feudal estate4. Class systems aspire to be meritocratic with

opportunities for social mobility5. People in industrial societies have equal rights

despite class differences6. There are no legal barriers to cross class

marriage

Measuring Social Class

Politicians, social scientists and advertisers all have an interest in operationalising the concept of social class (defining in a way that can be measured).

Politicians may wish to implement policy which addresses inequality

Social scientists may wish to evaluate the causes and impact of inequality

Advertisers may wish to target their marketing to particular social groups

Class and Occupation

Most people work therefore the single most measurable factor linked to social class is occupation.

There are a number of ‘scales’ on social class based on occupation including the Registrar General, The Hope Goldthorpe Scale and the NS-SEC.

One weakness of all occupation based definitions of class is that they ignore people who don’t work!