Afterthoughts

Abstract

There has always been a tendency for a tiny echelon to stand out from the rest of the population. This echelon is sometimes called the elite, the privileged few, or ‘the 1 per cent’ who reap most of the rewards. Learned professionals constitute a wider uppermost social segment, where choices of spouse and succession of status are still influenced by status equivalence. Professionalization tends to lead to convergence between occupations, making it more difficult to tell apart classes that used to be clearly distinguishable. Status equivalence remains a persistent rationale for choices in the marriage market as well as for choices of occupations, a mystical force that we have inherited from the past in the same way as we carry the dark burden or the glory of our family’s past, usually for three generations.