What do people use to class people by status?

6 comments

1. There isn’t any set way of doing this outside of specific contexts. Some people think anyone from a working class background is working class, some base it on things like holidays, having a cleaner, etc and other lifestyle factors, some base it mostly on the type of job you do regardless of pay level.

   Class is a very nebulous concept in the UK.

2. Can even be something as simple as your accent.

3. Class covers a multitude of concepts. There’s economic class – based on occupation: that’s the A to E system in government statistics.

   There’s sociological class: either the marxist ‘Capitalist’, ‘petty bourgeois’, ‘Proletariat’ , ‘lumpenProletariat’ system or Weber’s upper, middle, white-collar, manual division.

   In common usage though, class is mostly referring to cultural or tribal attributes rather than economic. (There’s plenty of working-class plumbers earn more than middle-class accountants). It’s about lifestyle: Radio 3 or Radio 1 in the car, Megaluf or a guided tour of ancient greek ruins for a foreign holiday, O2 or the Globe for a night out in London.

   The biggest distinction however is that middle-class people pay for private education, working-class kids go to state schools.

4. Use the Jeremy Clarkson test, if you have more than three types of pasta in your house, you’re middle class.

5. I don’t think of class and status as the same thing tbh. Generally if I had to say what class someone was I’d infer that based on education/job/assets of an individual and their parents. But that isn’t the same as status. And I’d say it’s likely that what you think is ‘high status’ probably varies by class.

   I don’t really think income is that good of an indicator of class as wealth is so often passed down through generations – so 2 people earning 30k are not equal if one had loads of financial help from their parents to buy a house and generally has that security net for their future as they know they will inherit money when they are older or if they have any struggles their family will help out.

6. I think it depends on the class. For the upper middle and upper class you are born, live and die in your class. Working and lower middle class has a lot of crossing over. And the traditional middle class is more if you are born in it you will be middle class your whole life most likely. But you can also become middle class if you weren’t born in it.

   So has a lot to do on what you were born as. Who your parents are, and what your current position is.