Social Class in the 21st Century by Mike Savage review – the emotional effect of class

Are you ‘established middle class’, ‘technical middle class’ or one of the ‘precariat’? Today’s complex society demands new categories

If there’s a single fact that illustrates the way social class works in Britain today, it’s in the opening pages of this startling book. Of the 161,000 people who initially filled in the Great British Class Survey, which ran on the BBC website in 2011, 4.1% listed their occupation as chief executive, which is 20 times their representation in the labour force. By contrast, precisely no one stated they were a cleaner. While it’s pleasant to have your status at the top of the social pile affirmed, it’s rather less so to be reminded you’re at the bottom.

The coffin of class, to paraphrase Richard Hoggart, remains stubbornly empty. Savage and his colleagues in the London School of Economics’ sociology department have used the results of the class survey to create a seven-class schema, which reveals the vast and growing disparity in wealth and power between the “elite” and the “precariat”. The old distinctions between upper, middle and working class no longer hold true, necessitating a range of new intermediate groups that reflect the reality of social mobility for an enlarged lower-to-upper-middle class. Savage estimates that a super-wealthy class now represents about 6% of the population, with an average household income of £89,000 – boosted, he notes, by attendance at Oxford and one or two other super-elite universities.

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