Class calculator wins data journalism award

24 Jun 2013 The BBC's Great British Class Calculator, developed with a team fromThe University of Manchester, London school of Economics and University of York has won a prestigious award. The calculator allows you to find out which one of seven social classes you most closely match and is based on data from BBC Lab UK's Great British Class Survey, the largest ever study of class in the UK. The Great British Class Survey of 161,000 people, charted the emergence of a new class system comprising seven groups in Britain, blurring the conventional boundaries between the 'middle' and 'working' classes. The team was led by BBC LabUK, Professors Fiona Devine from The University of Manchester and Mike Savage from the London School of Economics. The new model ranges from the Elite, the most privileged group at the top to a 'Precariat', the poorest, most deprived class at the bottom. The traditional view of a Britain made up working, middle and upper class people was no longer accurate, they said. The Global Editor's Network Data Journalism Awards recognise outstanding work and editorial excellence in the field of data journalism.