They had to live in poor and crowded houses, with the threat of diseases. Whole families had to work and members were separated. Blue Collar: Describes working-class occupations, especially those involving manual labor. Those in the working class are commonly employed in clerical, retail sales, and low-skill manual labor occupations. The working poor are working people whose incomes fall below a given poverty line due to low-income jobs and low familial household income. These are people who spend at least 27 weeks in a year working or looking for employment, but remain under the poverty threshold.
In the past few years, middle-class families have faced increasingly challenging conditions. They are in trouble. Despite extraordinarily high salaries and degree requirements, engineers serve essentially the same function as other blue or white collar workers in the American capitalist society. We engineers have joined the working class. The majority of nurses identify themselves as being working class and the ONS categorises them below doctors and pharmacists in its social stratification.
Consequently, nurses are oppressed in the same way as other working class professions as part of the economic and social structure of society.
In modern American vernacular, the term middle class is most often used as a self-description by those persons whom academics and Marxists would otherwise identify as the working class, which are below both the upper class and the true middle class, but above those in poverty.
There is no official financial standard for what constitutes middle class. For all of these reasons, lower class households are the most economically vulnerable in the United States. Gilbert Model : This is a model of the socio-economic stratification of American society, as outlined by Dennis Gilbert.
The United States has a high level of income inequality, with a wide gap between the top and bottom brackets of earners. Income Distribution by Education : This graph illustrates the unequal distribution of income between groups with different levels of educational attainment. Education is an indicator of class position, meaning that unequal distribution of income by education points to inequality between the classes. Unequal distribution of income between genders, races, and the population, in general, in the United States has been the frequent subject of study by scholars and institutions.
A number of studies by the U. The Great Divergence differs in some ways from the pre-Depression era inequality observed in the early s the last period of great inequality. Privacy Policy. Skip to main content. Stratification, Inequality, and Social Class in the U. Search for:.
The Class Structure in the U. Class Structure in the U. High income earners likely are substantially educated, have high- status occupations, and maintain powerful social networks. The American Dream : The belief that with hard work, courage, and determination, anyone can prosper and achieve success. Corporate Elite : A class of high-salaried stockholders, such as corporate CEOs, who do not necessarily have inherited privilege but have achieved high status through their careers.
Learning Objectives Discuss the most important characteristics of the upper class in the U. Key Takeaways Key Points Members of the upper class accumulate wealth through investments and capital gains, rather than through annual salaries. Key Terms investment : The expenditure of capital in expectation of deriving income or profit from its use.
The Upper Middle Class The upper-middle class refers to people within the middle class that have high educational attainment, high salaries, and high status jobs. Learning Objectives Identify the central characteristics of the upper-middle class in the U. Key Takeaways Key Points Members of the upper-middle class have substantially less wealth and prestige than the upper class, but a higher standard of living than the lower-middle class or working class.
In addition to having autonomy in their work, above-average incomes, and advanced educations, the upper middle class also tends to be powerful; members are influential in setting trends and shaping public opinion. Key Terms educational attainment : Educational attainment is a term commonly used by statisticians to refer to the highest degree of education an individual has completed. The Lower Middle Class The lower-middle class are those with some education and comfortable salaries, but with socioeconomic statuses below the upper-middle class.
Learning Objectives Discuss the differences between the lower and upper-middle class. White Collar : Describes a person who performs professional, managerial, or administrative work for a salary. The Working Class The working class consists of individuals and households with low educational attainment, low status occupations, and below average incomes. Learning Objectives Explain how differences in class culture may affect working-class students who enter the post-secondary education system.
Key Takeaways Key Points Members of the working class usually have a high school diploma or some college education, and may work in low-skilled occupations like retail sales or manual labor. Key Terms working class : The social class of those who perform physical or low-skilled work for a living, as opposed to the professional or middle class, the upper class, or the upper middle class. Blue Collar : Describes working-class occupations, especially those involving manual labor.
The Lower Class The lower class consists of those at the bottom of the socioeconomic hierarchy who have low education, low income, and low status jobs. Key Takeaways Key Points Low educational attainment and disabilities are two of the main reasons individuals can either struggle to find work or fall into the lower class. Generally, the term lower class describes individuals working easily-filled employment positions.
These positions typically have little prestige or economic compensation, and do not require workers to have a high school education.
Lower class households are at the greatest risk of falling below the poverty line if a job holder suddenly becomes unemployed. Key Terms Poverty line : This is the threshold of poverty used by the U. Census Bureau to define the minimum income one must earn to meet basic material needs. Income Distribution The United States has a high level of income inequality, with a wide gap between the top and bottom brackets of earners.
Different groups get different compensation for the same work. Homer Simpson is working class. Ned Flanders is middle class. Jake Peralta is working class. Phil Dunphy is middle class. Darryl Philbin is working class. Jim Halpert is middle class. This is a very good question. It's one of those issues that you don't think about until you do, and once you think about it you can't help but find it everywhere. Those of us who write about economics use the terms "working class" and "middle class" casually but carelessly.
They show up in articles on income, labor and policy but we rarely does anyone slow down long enough to clarify what either status actually means. So let's dive into it. First, middle class can refer to anyone who makes a certain amount of money compared to the rest of the country. So the generic income cutoff for middle class in America is:. Now, the catch here is that this refers to household income. A single person living alone needs far less money to be considered middle class than does a family of five.
As of the most recent Pew Survey, to be considered middle class by this standard you would need to fall within the following annual income ranges:. And this works great in some parts of the country. You'll be surprised just how far someone can drive one of those big smoothie straws into drywall.
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