Social Class

Other measures

Goldblatt has offered alternative measures including home ownership, access to a car and educational status and has shown that all of these can be correlated to inequalities in mortality rates.

During the last twenty-five years a number of writers, including Offe and Beck have questioned whether class still has relevance in a modern, pluralist welfare state. They have argued that class is not so important in defining who we are, how we behave or where our loyalties lie.

Yet there is considerable evidence that people in Britain still often identify themselves as members of a class and that significant correlations between class inequalities in health and life-chances continue to exist.