The NRS social grades are a system of demographic classification

Demography

Demography is the statistical study of human population. It can be a very general science that can be applied to any kind of dynamic human population, that is, one that changes over time or space...

 used in the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

. They were originally developed by the National Readership Survey in order to classify readers, but are now used by many other organisations for wider applications and have become a standard for market research. They were developed over 50 years ago and achieved widespread usage in 20th Century Britain. Their definition is now maintained by the Market Research Society.

The distinguishing feature of social grade is that it is based on occupation.

The grades

The classifications are based on the occupation of the head of the household.

Grade	Social class	Chief income earner's occupation
A	upper middle class Upper middle class The upper middle class is a sociological concept referring to the social group constituted by higher-status members of the middle class. This is in contrast to the term "lower middle class", which is used for the group at the opposite end of the middle class stratum, and to the broader term "middle...	Higher managerial, administrative or professional
B	middle class Middle class The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....	Intermediate managerial, administrative or professional
C1	lower middle class Lower middle class In developed nations across the world, the lower middle class is a sub-division of the greater middle class. Universally the term refers to the group of middle class households or individuals who have not attained the status of the upper middle class associated with the higher realms of the middle...	Supervisory or clerical and junior managerial, administrative or professional
C2	skilled working class	Skilled manual workers
D	working class Working class Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...	Semi and unskilled manual workers
E	Those at the lowest levels of subsistence	Casual or lowest grade workers, pensioners and others who depend on the welfare state for their income

The grades are often grouped into ABC1 and C2DE and these are taken to equate to middle class and working class respectively. Only around 2% of the UK population identifies as upper class

Upper class

In social science, the "upper class" is the group of people at the top of a social hierarchy. Members of an upper class may have great power over the allocation of resources and governmental policy in their area.- Historical meaning :...

, and this group is not included in the classification scheme.

See also

• National Statistics Socio-economic Classification
  National Statistics Socio-economic Classification
  The National Statistics Socio-economic Classification is the primary social classification in the United Kingdom. Its first major use was on the 2001 UK census...
  
  
• Social class
  Social class
  Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
  
  
• ACORN (demographics)
  ACORN (demographics)
  ACORN is a geodemographic information system categorising all United Kingdom postcodes into various types based upon census data and other information such as lifestyle surveys....
  
  
• Brave New World
  Brave New World
  Brave New World is Aldous Huxley's fifth novel, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Set in London of AD 2540 , the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of...
  
  

External links

• Summary of occupation groupings, Market Research Society
• National Readership Survey information on social grade and its discriminatory power
• MORI information on the grades
• Demographic classifications