Chapter 12
Social Class in the United States
I. Dimensions of Social Inequality.
A. U.S. society is highly stratified, but many people underestimate the extent of structured inequality in U.S. society for the following reasons:
1. In principle, the law gives equal standing to all.
2. Our culture celebrates individual autonomy and achievement.
3. We tend to interact with people like ourselves.
4. The United States is an affluent society.
B. Income consists of wages or salaries from work and earnings from investments. U.S. society has more income inequality than most other industrial societies.
C. Wealth consists of the total amount of money and other assets, minus outstanding debts. It is distributed even less equally than income.
D. Power is also unequally distributed.
Issue of campaign financing, lobbyists. Term limits perverse effect.
E. Occupational prestige. Occupation serves as a key source of social prestige since we commonly evaluate each other according to what we do.
F. Schooling affects both occupation and income.
II. U.S. Stratification: Merit and Class.
A. Ancestry. Family is our point of entry into the social system.
B. Race and ethnicity.
1. Race is closely linked to social position in the United States.
2. Historically, people of English ancestry have enjoyed the most wealth and wielded the greatest power in the United States.
Racial gap no closing. Structural reasons.
C. Gender. On average, women have less income, wealth, and occupational prestige than men.
III. Social Classes in the United States.
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Very murky: partially because of high status inconsistency.
A. The upper class. Historically, though less so today, the upper class has been composed of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants and represents 5 percent of the U.S. population.
1. The upper-upper class includes less than 1 percent of the U.S. population.
2. The lower-upper class are the “working rich”; earnings rather than inherited wealth are the primary source of their income.
B. The middle class includes 40 to 45 percent of the U.S. population and has a tremendous influence on our culture.
1. The upper-middle class have an above-average income in the range of $80,000 to $170,000 a year.
2. The average-middle class typically work in less prestigious white-collar occupations or in highly skilled blue-collar jobs. Household income is between $40,000 and $80,000 a year, which is about the national average.
C. The working class make up one-third of the population. Their blue-collar jobs yield an income of between $25,000 and $40,000 a year.
D. The lower class make up 20 percent of our population. Low income makes their lives unstable and insecure.
IIIa. Globalization, political change, and Inequality
A. After high levels of social inequality in 1920s, US workers experiences rapid wage gains for 30 years, roughly from 1945 to 1975
B. Since then, inequality has increased rapidly, with income and wage gains mainly among top 10 percent, not middle class workers.
C. Causes: Policy shifts after 1980, Globalization.
C. Globalization, outsourcing, postindustrial economy, rise of Creative Class, importance of education
V. Social Mobility.
A. Intragenerational social mobility is a change in social position occurring during a person’s lifetime; intergenerational social mobility is upward or downward social mobility of children in relation to their parents.
Structural social mobility, up or down, is key.
B. Myth versus reality.
1. Four general conclusions about social mobility in the United States:
a. Social mobility over the course of the last century has been fairly high.
b. The long-term trend in social mobility has been upward.
c. Within a single generation, social mobility is usually small.
d. Social mobility since the 1970s has been uneven.
C. Mobility varies by income level: 291: rich are getting richer.
D. Mobility varies by race, ethnicity and gender.
E. The "American Dream:" Still a reality?
1. For many workers, earnings have stalled.
2. Multiple job-holding is up.
3. More jobs offer little income.
4. Young people are remaining at home.
Va. Decline of the Middle Class
A. Chicago, graphic, diamond to hourglass
B. Bitcoin, Blockchain, NFTs as way into upper class.
IV. The Difference Class Makes.
A. Health. Richer people live, on average, seven years longer because they eat more nutritious food, live in safer and less stressful environments, and receive better medical care.
B. Values and Attitudes. Affluent people with greater education and financial security are more tolerant of controversial behavior, while working-class people tend to be less tolerant.
C. Politics.
1. Well-off people tend to be more conservative on economic issues but more liberal on social issues. The reverse is true for those people of lower social standing.
2. Higher-income people are more likely to vote and join political organizations than people in the lower class.
“What’s the matter with Kansas?”
D. Family and gender.
1. Most lower-class families are somewhat larger than middle-class families.
2. Working-class parents encourage conventional norms and respect to authorities; whereas parents of higher social standing transmit a different “cultural capital” to their children, stressing individuality and imagination.
VI. Poverty in the United States.
A. Relative poverty refers to the deprivation of some people in relation to those who have more. Absolute poverty is a deprivation of resources that is life-threatening.
B. The extent of U.S. Poverty.
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D. Explaining poverty.
1. One view: The poor are mostly responsible for their own poverty.
a. The poor become trapped in a culture of poverty, a lower-class subculture that can destroy people’s ambition.
2. Another view: Society is primarily responsible for poverty.
a. Most of the evidence suggests that society rather than the individual is primarily responsible for poverty.
b. When Work Disappears: The Result Is Poverty: William Julius Wilson points out that while people continue to talk about welfare reform, neither major political party has said anything about the lack of work in central cities.
Issue has spread to middle class: has become an issue.
c. Weighing the evidence. The reasons that people do not work seem consistent with the “blame society” position.
d. The working poor. Four percent of full-time workers earn so little that they remain poor.
E. Homelessness.
1. Counting the homeless. As many as 3.5 million people are homeless at sometime during the course of a year.
2. Causes of homelessness:
a. Personality traits vs. social issues, e.g., housing costs.
California has US highest Functional Poverty Rate, Cities with highest homelessness rates. Why?
VII California's Housing Crisis
Demand exceeds supply
Several factors have together caused constraints on the construction of new housing: density restrictions (e.g. single-family zoning) and high land cost conspire to keep land and housing prices high; community involvement in the permitting process allows current residents who oppose new construction (often referred to as NIMBYs) to lobby their city council to deny new development; environmental laws are often abused by local residents and others to block or gain concessions from new development (making it more costly or too expensive to be profitable); greater local tax revenues from hotels, commercial, and retail development vs. residential incentivize cities to permit less residential; and construction costs are greater because of high impact fees, and often developments are only approved if union labor is used.[9]
NIMBY: Not in my backyard!