Measuring social class

Abstract

By the end of this chapter you should:

• be aware of the main ways that social class is measured in official government publications, and the problems associated with these;

• be aware of sociologists’ schemes to measure social class;

• have gained a critical understanding of the problems involved in measuring and classifying social class;

• be able to distinguish between objective and subjective notions of social class;

• have considered and evaluated the main schemas for yourself.