According to a new survey commissioned by the BBC, Britain is now divided into seven different social classes. The good news, dear reader, is that you’re almost certainly at the top of the pyramid in the class the BBC calls the ‘social elite’. Members of this group own houses worth, on average, £325,000 and their mean household income is £89,000 a year. The bad news is that it’s not a particularly exclusive club. The social elite accounts for 6 per cent of the UK population, which means you’re sharing the distinction with 3,790,920 others. That’s a pretty crowded VIP section.
It could be worse. At the bottom of the table is the ‘precariat’ — the precarious proletariat — who constitute 15 per cent of the population. They rent rather than own, are unlikely to have been to university and their mean household income is £8,000. They’re located in old industrial areas — places like Stoke-on-Trent, according to the survey.
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