... Haralambos and Holborn (2004)p.32,'the most usual way of defining the middle class is to see it as consisting of those individual who have non-manual occupations, that is occupations which involve, in some sense, an intellectual element'. Many sociologists consider that the working class or manual workers can be distinguished from the middle class or non-manual workers in a number of different ways. The hand out shows that the non-manual workers enjoy advantages over manual workers in terms of their life chances. They are likely to enjoy higher standards of health, and to live longer; they are less likely to own their own house and a variety of consumer goods. There are also important differences in the market and work situations of manual and non-manual workers. First, non-manual workers get higher average wages than manual workers. Second, the earning of manual workers will peak in their thirties, whereas non-manual worker' earning ...

See this essay or coursework document in full right now