Sociology Assignment: Social Classes, Health, and Social Care Analysis

This report delves into the sociological understanding of social classes and their profound influence on health and social care. It begins by defining the five social classes in the UK and their varying access to resources and healthcare services. The report then explores sociological perspectives, including functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism, and how they shape health and social care delivery. It examines the patterns of health across different social classes, highlighting the impact of economic factors. The report also discusses the utilization of demographic data in planning health and social care services, emphasizing its role in understanding mortality and morbidity rates across different demographic groups like gender, age, and ethnicity. The conclusion underscores the importance of sociological insights for providing equitable and effective healthcare to all members of society.

Sociology Guide Sheet
project 2

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Social classes recognized in the Home Nation document......................................................3
Sociological perspectives to health and social care................................................................4
Patterns of health across social classes...................................................................................5
Demographic data is used in planning health and social care services..................................5
Sociological explanations for the patterning of mortality and morbidity rates......................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Sociological understanding leads to influence people's social background. It is related to
the quality of their health and social care, social structure and society's culture. It is also able to
affect health and social care inequality in the health list to create an impact on the quality of
healthcare. In this report, there is a description of social classes, a sociological perspective
different patterns of health and across social classes. There is also a description of the use of
demographic data for planning health and social care services. There is also a distraction about
the social logical explanation that is for patterning mortality and morbidity rates within a
different group of gender age ethnicity and area of residence (Leyva, (2019)).
MAIN BODY
Social classes recognized in the Home Nation document
Social class in the UK are designated as five different groups which are upper class,
upper-middle class, middle class, working-class and lower class. These are the type of classes
which are divided all people into different classes. These levels are representative of the general
approach which is generally used in popular language and by researchers. Citizens of the UK are
divided into 5 distinct social classes which are discussed further.
Upper-class- They are the ones which already known as upper class. There are about 6%
of British society with very high economic capital. They are the ones who are occupational like
chief executive officers, marketing and sales directors, directors, judges, financial managers. It
and telecommunication directors and many more. They are the ones who live a higher standard
of living by getting the better and highest quality of service through healthcare (Øversveen,
(2017)).
Upper-middle-class- They are the ones who are about 25% of British society which are
also having like economic capital but lower than the upper class. They are having higher status
with social contacts. They are like a social worker, environmental professionals, electronics,
engineers occupational therapists, planning officials and many more. They are also having better
access to health care services efficiently.
Middle class- They are the ones who about 6% of operative society and having better
economic capital along with social contacts. They are pharmacists, aircraft Pilots, medical
radiographers, physical scientists, Research and administrative positions, businessman and many

more. They have better access to health care services or better health and social care (Walker,
(2018)).
Worker class- They are the ones who are about 14% of British society and are relatively
poor with economic capital and having little housing assets. They are having little social contacts
and have cubicle occupations which are like care worker, cleaner, electrician, domiciliary care,
electronics, technician, van drivers and many more. They are not able to get a high quality of
healthcare access or they are better health and social care.
Lower class- There are about 19 % of society and are highly poor with economic capital.
They have a little bit of social contact. They are typically occupations which are like nursing
assistant, care worker, customer service occupations, musicians and many more. They are not
able to get that access to health care services and always get a lower level of healthcare services
for their health and social care (Weisner, (2018)).
Sociological perspectives to health and social care
Functionalism theory is related to the philosophy of mind and which is said that social
work is a complex system in which all the work is related with each other for providing
solidarity and stability. This is focused on the social structure that shapes society as a whole.
This is the one for health and social care that can provide better attainment for providing
different health care services that can have lead to provide improvement in the health of a
person. This can not only attend by providing treatment. There is also a need for social care that
can have a high impact on health and social care. At this time Functionalism theory can be done
by providing both health and social care in such a manner that can lead to having improved
health of the patient and this can relate to better well-being of the society (Au, (2019)).
Conflict theory is the one which is associated by society when the social class has a
systematically empowered over another for consuming different resources. These different social
classes have demand to share those resources for the more fortunate class who is abundance.
This leads to creating conflict between two different social classes in the society. This is highly
related to consuming resources that can have equally empowered all social classes in society.
This conflict theory has a different impact and can generally have some better impact for
providing equal empowerment for using resources. There can also be a negative impact which is
not fortunate.

Symbolic interactionism is an age of micro-level theory which can focus on relationships
among individuals in society. This is the one in which society is composed of different symbols
which people use to establish meaning communicating with one another and develop views
about the world. This is the thinking which acts accordingly for interpreting situation. This can
be specified by any people who have done many things for one social class then that person's
name can be used as a symbol for motivating continue working for better improvement in that
social class. Within society, this creates symbolic interaction (McNamara, (2017)).
Patterns of health across social classes
There are different social classes which are are upper class, upper-middle-class, middle
class, worker and lower class. All classes have different access to health and have a different
patterns regarding health within society. There is a certain factor which is economy and finance
with an impact and so the witness in the different class group.
In upper-class people have a high level of finance their economic condition is highly
maintained and due to this, this social class can access health and social care. This can highly be
employed for improvement in their help.
Whereas, upper-middle-class is also financially strong by economic power and also able
to get better access to health care services which can be employed by them. They are a little bit
lower financially strong than the upper class but have enough economic conditions that they can
achieve high class of medical services for their better health.
The middle class is the one who has average financial status but they are also able to get
better health care services but less effective health care services than the upper middle class and
higher class. The middle class can get better healthcare services for their better well-being.
Whereas, workers and the lower middle class are the ones who have no enough financial
condition that could lead to providing them better access to health care services for better
improvement in health. They are also not having a better economic condition that can lead to
provide effective treatment on time and this creates different issues for accessing healthcare
services and lead to a low level of health (Greenhalgh, (2017)).
Demographic data is used in planning health and social care services
Information related to static collect, the collection is known as demographic which is
generally used for making a plan regarding health and social care services. This is the one that

can provide better mortality and morbidity rate which can allow to making strategies and
planning for providing better health and social care services.
Vaccination is one of the research areas which is generally based on demographic data
which allows the government for providing better planning regarding health and social care
services which allow getting vaccinated against any virus.
Certain illness like heart disease, Kidney disease is some of the diseases as illness which
are generally based on a cultural group. where any specific social group is highly impacted by
such type of disease. This creates research over illness in a certain cultural group. This leads to
creating demographic data and helps to plan better health and social care services to that social
class to avoid such type of diseases (Pepin, (2018)).
Sociological explanations for the patterning of mortality and morbidity rates
There is much sociological explanation which is related to the patterning of mortality and
morbidity rate within demographic groups which are going to be discussed further.
Gender- This is the one demographic group which have two different male and female
category. This is the one through which it can be easy to find different mortality rates. It is
related to male or female which can provide information that would help for planning better
health and social care. This also provides mortality rate which is based on male or female. There
are a different number of diseases that occur in men or women specifically. This can provide
better information within society about mortality and morbidity based on gender.
Age- This is the one which is highly impacting on the demography which is related with
different age group. This is the one which can provide the information about different age groups
because different is group has a different type of diseases which they generally diseased with.
Each group has some specific type of diseases which they suffer by. This creates different
information which helps in planning for better health and social care by the government. This is
totally specific data that provide specific data for better strategy making and planning. This is the
one that has a high impact on society which leads to creating that which group has which type of
disease and how they can be diminished.
Ethnicity- Ethnicity is also a demographic group which can provide different type of
information related with different ethnicity. This is the one which can provide different type of
racial and ethnic categories which are suffering from which type of disease. This is the one that
can provide better information related to a different type of ethnic category. There are different

diseases which are generally can be observed within some specific category which could have to
suffer from some specific disease like gonorrhea, hypertension etc. This demographic group
allows the government to classify and provide the information for categorizing different ethnic
categories that can have some specific health-related issue. This helped the government in
making a strategy and planning for providing better health social care to them. These are some of
the sources which can provide better information and background trading related with the
different demographic group. This provides a social logical explanation for the patterning of
mortality and morbidity rates. These rates can provide information about the demographic data
for providing better health and social care services for planning accordingly (Knight, (2017)).
CONCLUSION
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that the sociological perspective is highly
interpersonal for providing better health and social care to different types of people. This can
have a better impact on society. There is a need to provide better health and social care services
to different people. In this report, there is a discussion about the different social classes which are
there in the home nation. There is also a discussion about sociological perspective which can
have a relation with health and social care. There is also a discussion about the pattern of health
across social classes. There is also a discussion about demographic data which are generally used
for planning health and social care services. There is also a discussion about the sociological
explanation for the patterning of mortality and morbidity rates within different demographic
groups like gender, age or ethnicity.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Au, (2019). The embodiment of social capital at individual and communal levels: action,
rewards, inequality, and new directions. International Journal of Sociology and Social
Policy.
Greenhalgh, (2017). Beyond adoption: a new framework for theorizing and evaluating
nonadoption, abandonment, and challenges to the scale-up, spread, and sustainability of
health and care technologies. Journal of medical Internet research, 19(11), e367.
Knight, (2017). One egalitarianism or several? Two decades of gender-role attitude change in
Europe. American Journal of Sociology, 122(5), 1485-1532.
Leyva, (2019). Towards a cognitive-sociological theory of subjectivity and habitus formation in
neoliberal societies. European Journal of Social Theory, 22(2), 250-271.
McNamara, (2017). The socioeconomic distribution of non-communicable diseases in Europe:
findings from the European Social Survey (2014) special module on the social
determinants of health. The European Journal of Public Health, 27(suppl_1), 22-26.
Øversveen, (2017). Rethinking the relationship between socio-economic status and health:
Making the case for sociological theory in health inequality research. Scandinavian
journal of public health, 45(2), 103-112.
Pepin, (2018). Separating spheres? Diverging trends in youth's gender attitudes about work and
family. Journal of Marriage and Family, 80(1), 7-24.
Walker, (2018). A sociological approach to resilience in health and illness. Journal of evaluation
in clinical practice, 24(6), 1285-1290.
Weisner, (2018). Using Sociological Theories and Concepts in Accounting Information Systems
Research: A Framework for Team Research. Journal of Emerging Technologies in
Accounting, 15(2), 27-44.