Sociology Assignment: Social Class Structure in the United Kingdom

This report provides an overview of the social class structure in the United Kingdom. It begins with an introduction to the concept of social class, and then proceeds to describe the different classes, including the upper-middle class, lower-middle class, working class, and underclass, along with the proportion of the UK population belonging to each class. The report references the work of Kahl and Gilbert (1998) and Chandola (2000) to support the discussion, with a focus on the characteristics and employment of each social class. The working class, which includes both skilled and unskilled workers, constitutes the largest segment of the population. The report also highlights the role of council housing for the underclass. This report is a valuable resource for students studying sociology and social stratification.

Running head: SOCIOLOGY
SOCIOLOGY

SOCIOLOGY 1
Introduction
I am taking a social class of United Kingdom. The United Kingdom is one of the capitalist
countries in the world. According to the Kahl and Gilbert (1998), six social class United
Kingdom has are: upper middle class, lower middle class, working class, and underclass.
(Chandola, T. 2000).
Underclass:
Underclass people are those people who are "chronically unemployed" and has a characteristic of
long-term unemployment and lives in council housing. Almost 12% of UK population belongs to
this class.
Working class:
Working class consist of unskilled, semi- skilled and skilled working class. Unskilled and semi-
skilled working class people are those people who left their school or forced them to leave the
school are working in assembly line factory in Britain (Chandola, et al., 2000). Skilled people are
those who are highly educated and traditionally working in construction and manufacturing
industry. Almost all the population is working in the UK. Among all 60% of the total population
belongs to working class.
Lower middle class:
British lower middle class are consist of those people who are working in an office (Chandola, et
al., 2000). They are mostly worked as unskilled worker and work in a retail sale, factory labor,
etc. the population belong to lower middle class in the UK is approx. 10%.

SOCIOLOGY 2
Upper middle class:
In Britain, the upper middle class is those type of people who are born to a family who has a
traditionally high income as this class is more defined by their family background in spite of
their job and income (Chandola, et al., 2000). What people belongs to this category is 15% of
total population in the UK.

SOCIOLOGY 3
References
Chandola, T. (2000). Social class differences in mortality using the new UK National Statistics
Socio-Economic Classification. Social science & medicine, 50(5), 641-649.