A stratum is a socially homogeneous group. For example, bureaucratic, professional (academicians of the Russian Academy of Sciences), etc.
A stratum includes many people with some common status attribute of their position, who feel connected to each other by this community. As this sign, which makes it possible to unite people into strata, there can be production, economic, political, socio-demographic, cultural, etc. signs of a different nature. People belonging to different classes may end up in the same stratum, distinguished, for example, by education or job description.
The basis for distinguishing a stratum is not any sign, but only a status one, that is, one that objectively acquires in a given society the rank character “higher-lower”, “better-worse”, “prestigious-unprestigious”.
Stratification
Stratification (social stratification) — this refers to the presence in a particular society of many social formations, whose representatives differ from each other in an unequal amount of power and material wealth, rights and obligations, privileges and prestige. Such a hierarchical arrangement of socio-cultural benefits expresses the essence of social stratification, with the help of which society gets the opportunity to stimulate certain types of activities and interactions, tolerate others and suppress others.