By Latin American standards, Uruguay is a relatively egalitarian
society with a large middle class. One factor that historically
helped the country avoid social polarization was the broad
provision of free public education by the state starting in the
1870s. Economic stagnation since the 1950s has reduced the
opportunities for upward social mobility, but the incidence of
extreme wealth and poverty still approximated the pattern of
developed countries rather than that of the Third World.
Uruguay's upper classes consisted of ranchers, businessmen, and
politicians. The middle classes include professionals,
whitecollar workers, small businessmen, and medium-sized
farmers. The lower classes consisted of blue-collar workers,
domestic workers, a small number of peasants, and those forced
to survive precariously in the informal sector of the economy.
Estimates of the proportion of different sectors of the
population in each class are by definition arbitrary. The upper
classes are conventionally held to constitute 5 p