The traditional hereditary elites were marginalised in the 1970s, when military leaders gained prominence, before the Khmer Rouge attempted to dramatically eliminate existing class structures in the late 1970s.
The elite group was composed of high-ranking government, military, and religious leaders, characterized by high prestige, wealth, and education or by members one of the royal or noble families.
Members of this class included businessmen, white-collar workers, teachers, physicians, most of the Buddhist clergy, shopkeepers, clerks, and military officers of lower and middle rank.
[1] The lower class consisted of rural small farmers, fishermen, craftsmen, and blue-collar urban workers.
[1] Within the lower class, fewer status distinctions existed; those that did depended upon attributes such as age, sex, moral behavior, and religious piety.
Good character—honesty, generosity, compassion, avoidance of quarrels, chastity, warmth—and personal religious piety also increased status.
Buddhist monks and nuns, teachers, high-ranking government officials, and members of the hereditary aristocracy made up this category.
The availability of such positions did not keep pace with the number of educated youths, and in the late 1960s and the early 1970s this lag began to cause widespread dissatisfaction.
The deferential linguistic usages and the behavior styles directed toward members of these groups persisted through the 1970s and, to a limited extent, were still present in the late 1980s.
[1] The Khmer Rouge characterized Cambodians as belonging to one of several classes:[1] Social inequality has increased since the 1990s, with a widening gap between urban and rural areas.