Reuters/London
British people can now aspire to and despise four new levels of social classes, according to a new survey conducted by researchers in partnership with public broadcaster the BBC.
The Great British Class Survey found that the prevailing notions of a system comprised of the Upper Class, Middle Class and Working Class only related to a slice of the UK population, when analysed according to income, assets, social connections and social activities.
An “Elite” class and a “Precariat” (precarious proletariat) were the two most extreme groups at either end of a new social scale of seven classes produced by researchers from the London School of Economics (LSE) and University of Manchester based on two surveys conducted by the BBC and research firm GfK.
“It is striking that we have been able to discern a distinctive elite, whose sheer economic advantage sets it apart from other classes,” LSE Professor Mike Savage said. “At the opposite extreme, we have discerned the existence of a sizeable group (the Precariat) - 15% of the population - which is marked by the lack of any significant amount of economic, cultural, or social capital.”
In between those two classes, researchers Savage and Manchester University professor Fiona Devine alongside others found that the vast majority of the UK population can be broken down into an ‘Established Middle Class’, a ‘Technical Middle Class’, ‘New Affluent Workers’, the ‘Traditional Working Class’ and ‘Emergent Service Workers’.
Of all the classes, the Established Middle Class was the biggest, representing 25% of the population and referred to by researchers as the “comfortably off bulwark of British society” who live predominantly in small towns or rural areas. They were followed by Emergent Service Workers at 19%, the Precariat and New Affluent Workers at 15% each, the Traditional Working Class at 14% and the Technical Middle Class and the Elite both at 6%.
