Demographics

“NRS stands for National Readership Survey (NRS Ltd).

          The NRS 'ABC1' demographics profiling system - often called 'social grade definitions' - is well established and widely used.

          Many people know and refer to the system simply as 'ABC1' or 'ABC' and may not necessarily understand that NRS developed and operate the scheme.

          NRS is a not-for-profit company which is funded by the UK Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), Newspaper Publishers Association (NPA), and Periodical Publishers Association (PPA).

          The NRS social grade definitions have been in use for decades, mainly for audience profiling and targeting by the media, publishing and advertising sectors, and have become established as a generic reference series for classifying and describing social classes, especially for consumer targeting and consumer market research.

          See below for the NRS estimates of uk population by social grade Jan-Dec 2005, and for Jan-Dec 2004.

          More up-to-date figures will be offered here when/if I can agree to their provision.”

(source: http://www.businessballs.com/demographicsclassifications.htm#nrs-social-grade-definitions-uk)

The demographic table of social class shows the differences in social classes in the UK and gives examples of their occupations. The way the table works is by alphabetizing the classes with A being the highest ranking of the classes and E being the lowest. For C there are 2 sub-categories, C1 and C2. This is because although they are different, they can be very similar. The social statuses are the formal word or phrase for the social classes except for social grade E, which is called, “those at lowest level of subsistence” which is quite strongly worded and gives a negative image of these people.