There are apparently clusters of attitudes around occupations, living areas, wealth, ways of speaking and acting, and social origins that can be said to be class oriented. If the members of the families cited above accumulate property and pass it on to their children, along with a relatively rigid code of conduct befitting their class, they may be said to be an hereditary elite regardless of whether the position they hold in society is prescribed by title. Community custom and habit will afford the families in question a degree of deference withheld from those of other social stations in the area. Determining the stability of inherited distinctions. Class systems of eliteness are generally more open than those based upon caste or other rigid rules of prescribed behavior.
Individuals move up and down the class ladder during their lifetimes.
Yet, there is enough stability in class positions that one generation tends to start at the base line of class position held by the parent generation. Hollingshead in tracing class positions of high school students in a medium sized community pinpointed the relative stability of class positions. Changes in hereditary elites. The foregoing does not imply that only the elements of stability must be observed. There is good reason to believe that all social groups are in a slow but constant state of change.