4.2.8 - Defining and Measuring Social Class

Why class is hard to define

Sociologists disagree about what class actually is, so they also disagree about how it should be measured. An objective approach treats class as something researchers can observe through indicators such as occupation, income, wealth, or employment conditions. A subjective approach looks at how people identify themselves. This matters because class is not only about where people stand in the economy; it can also shape identity, culture, lifestyle, and how others see them.

Marx — Defined class in terms of a person's relationship to the means of production. In capitalism, the key divide is between the bourgeoisie, who own productive property, and the proletariat, who must sell their labour power. This definition is strong on power and exploitation, but it is quite blunt for measuring a complex modern workforce.

Weber — Saw class as based on market situation, meaning the skills, qualifications, and resources people bring to the labour market. Different market situations produce different life chances, so Weber gives us a more graduated picture than Marx's two-class model.

Bourdieu — Argued that class cannot be reduced to money alone. People also possess cultural capital and social capital, which help explain why people with similar incomes may still occupy different class positions and move through institutions differently.

The core problem is that each definition captures something real but partial. A purely economic definition may miss status and culture. A purely subjective definition may tell us how people see themselves, but not whether that self-image matches their structural position. This is why sociologists often argue about both theory and method at the same time.

Occupation as a measure

In practical research, occupation has often been used as the main proxy for class because it is relatively easy to collect in surveys and censuses. Occupation connects to income, authority, job security, qualifications, and social status, so it can give a quick picture of where someone is located in the stratification system. The problem is that it is still a proxy, not class itself.

The Registrar General's Social Class scale (RGSC) — Classified people into categories such as professional, managerial, skilled non-manual, skilled manual, semi-skilled manual, and unskilled manual. Its biggest advantage was simplicity. Researchers could use it repeatedly over long periods, making comparison easier.

However, RGSC had serious limitations. It relied heavily on assumptions about occupational prestige rather than directly measuring employment relations or wealth. It also worked badly for people outside standard full-time paid work, including retired people, the unemployed, and many women whose class position was historically assigned through a husband's occupation.

The National Statistics Socio-economic Classification (NS-SEC) — Replaced RGSC and shifted attention from prestige to employment relations and conditions. This is a more sociological move because it asks whether work is secure or insecure, autonomous or tightly supervised, and based on a service relationship or a labour contract.

The key methodological strength of occupation-based measures is reliability. Large-scale surveys can code occupations consistently, which helps researchers compare groups and track change over time. Their weakness is validity: they may not fully measure what sociologists really mean by class.

Why occupation is not enough

Occupation-based measures miss several important features of contemporary inequality. First, they often ignore wealth. Someone may have an ordinary occupation but own significant property or inherited assets, which changes their life chances dramatically. Second, they struggle with people outside paid employment, such as students, unpaid carers, retirees, and the long-term unemployed.

They also handle the informal economy badly. If a source of income is undeclared, criminal, or irregular, occupation categories tell us very little. This matters because sociology is concerned with real power and life chances, not just tidy survey boxes.

Gender makes the problem sharper. Feminists have long criticised class schemes that treat the household as if it has one obvious class position. In dual-earner households, which occupation should count? If one partner is a finance manager and the other is a teaching assistant, there is no simple answer. Older approaches often gave priority to the man's occupation, which made women's economic position invisible and treated class as if it were naturally male.

Changing employment patterns create similar problems. Part-time work, agency work, gig work, zero-hours contracts, and self-employment all blur older class boundaries. Someone may appear independent because they are self-employed, but in practice have little security, weak bargaining power, and unstable income.