Does class still matter? It's harder than it once was to tell a person's class in America. But in some ways, class still plays an important role in our lives.

• Author: Scott, Janny
• Position: NATIONAL

There was a time when Americans thought they understood class. The upper crust took their vacations in Europe and worshipped in Episcopal churches. The middle class drove Ford Fairlanes and lived in the suburbs. The working class belonged to unions and did not take cruises to the Caribbean.

Today, the United States has gone a long way toward at least an appearance of classlessness. Americans of all classes are awash in luxuries that would have dazzled their grandparents, so it's become harder to read people's status in the cars they drive, or, for that matter, by the votes they cast or the color of their skin.

But class can still be a powerful force in American life. In some ways, over the past three decades, it may have come to play a greater, not lesser, role. Indeed, longstanding questions about class were raised recently by the disastrous aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which seemed to fall so much more heavily on the poor than the privileged.

CONTRADICTORY TRENDS

The trends are seemingly contradictory: a rise in standards of living over all, while most people remain moored in their relative places. It may now be easier for a few high achievers to scale the summits of wealth, but it has become harder for many others to move up from one economic class to another. Nevertheless, Americans continue to believe in the prospect of economic mobility.

Mobility, the movement of families up the economic ladder, is the promise that lies at the heart of the American dream. But new research on mobility shows there is far less of it than was once thought and less than most people I believe. (Some economists consider the new research inconclusive.)

Meanwhile, the ranks of the elite are opening, Today, there are more and more self-made billionaires and anyone may have a shot at becoming a Supreme Court Justice or CEO. Take, for example, Bill Clinton, who began life dirt-poor in a small Southern town and rose through the class ranks to become President. Or consider the Forbes 400, a list of the richest Americans: Only 37 members of last year's list inherited their wealth, down from almost 200 in the mid-1980s.

Merit has replaced the old system of inherited privilege. But merit, it turns out, is at least partly class-based. Parents with money, education, and connections cultivate in their children the habits that the meritocracy rewards. When their children succeed, their success is seen as earned.

Most Americans say hard work and a good education are more important to getting ahead than connections or a wealthy background, and most Americans remain upbeat about their prospects for getting ahead. A recent New York Times poll on class found that 40 percent of Americans believe that the chance of moving up from one class to another has risen over the last 30 years, but the new research shows that it has not.

"I think the system is as fair as you can make it," says Ernie Frazier, a 65-year-old real-estate investor in Houston. "I don't think life is...