social class in America can be hard to
talk about and not just because you may
find it awkward to discuss whose poor
and who's rich or who has more power and
who has less as sociologists the
difficulty for us is in pinning down
exactly what we mean by social class
there isn't just one definition of it
and the definition you use will depend
on what society you're interested in if
we go by Marx's definition we have two
classes the bushwa Z who own the means
of production and the proletariat who do
the labor but this might be too
simplistic for our world if you own a
small store and you work there which
category do you belong in your
day-to-day life probably looks more like
that of a retail employee than that of a
CEO but Marx would put you in the bush
huazi because you own a business and
hire workers so let's try another
definition one that's more in the
tradition of our old friend Max Weber
his theories were more about what kinds
of opportunities a person's class gives
them the owner of a big company has
different opportunities than the owner
of a small shop but they'll both have
different resources available to them
than someone who manages an office or
somebody who works at a factory so in
this case a social class can be defined
as a group that's fairly similar in
terms of income education power and
prestige in society and we can use this
definition to better understand the
social classes that make up society in
the United States and it can help us to
answer some of the questions they raise
like is there more than one kind of
upper-class how can the middle class fit
everyone who thinks they belong in it
and what does poverty in America really
look like
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broadly speaking American society can be
split into five social classes upper
class upper middle class average middle
class working class and lower class the
upper class consists essentially of the
capitalist and Marxist system this is
the top of the income and wealth
distribution those who are in at least
$250,000 a year and control much of the
country's wealth and as we learned last
week money talks
this group tends to wield a lot of
political and social power but within
the upper class there are subclasses
that distinguish by and large between
old money and new money the upper upper
class includes those who derive their
wealth from inheritance rather than work
people in this class may have jobs but
usually they take on more honorary
positions such as board members or
heading up philanthropic organizations
but there's also a large part of the
upper class food wealth came from work
most of those that we think of as
wealthy the Bill Gates Oprah Winfrey's
and Kanye West's of the world fall into
this group after upper-class comes the
middle class remember a while back when
we talked about how almost every
American thinks that their middle class
that's way too many people to fit into
the middle which is why sociologists
split the mid range of the income
distribution into three groups upper
middle-class families typically have
incomes between 115,000 and $250,000 per
year and make up about 15% of income
earners about two-thirds of the adults
here have college degrees and many have
postgraduate degrees it's almost a given
that their kids will attend college when
they grow up adults in this sector tend
to have jobs that are considered
prestigious doctors lawyers engineers
and the like their families typically
own homes and good school districts and
are able to afford luxuries like travel
and multiple vehicles and it may not
surprise you to learn that they're
wealthy at least compared to most
Americans this group is likely to have
wealth from their home strong 401ks and
financial investments now families in
these so-called average middle-class
make between 50,000 and $115,000 and
make up about 35% of income earners keep
in mind the median family income in the
u.s. is seventy thousand seven hundred
dollars so families in this grape still
tend to own their own homes but the
mortgages might be more cumbersome and
they have some wealth usually tied up in
their home or a modest retirement
savings account about half of this group
is college-educated though they're more
likely to have attended public
universities than private schools and
average middle-class jobs are typically
so called white-collar jobs think office
workers teachers and middle managers in
contrast most blue-collar workers or
whose work is primarily based in manual
labor fall in the lower middle class
about 30% of Americans are in this
category with incomes ranging from about
25 to $50,000 a year
lower middle class families are less
likely to own their own homes and
typically hold little to no wealth the
most defining feature of this social
class is the type of jobs that are
associated with it namely manual labor
which is why it's often referred to as
the working-class factory work
construction manufacturing maintenance
work all of these jobs generally fall
under working class occupations and
while some working-class jobs require
technical skills they don't usually
require a college education it's
important to note that working-class
jobs are more sensitive to how the
economy is doing because these jobs tend
to be built around making stuff when a
recession hits factories need fewer
workers to meet demands or the plants
owners might decide that it's cheaper to
use machines rather than workers to
produce their goods and just as
vulnerable to economic downturns if not
more so is the lower class lower class
Americans are blue-collar workers at the
bottom of the income distribution they
make less than $25,000 a year and tend
to work hourly jobs at our part time
with unpredictable schedules and no
benefits like health insurance or
pensions about 20% of Americans or the
bottom quintile fall into this group the
majority of these families don't own
their own homes and are more likely to
live in neighborhoods with higher rates
of poverty lower quality school
districts and higher crime rates in
contrast to an upper middle-class family
whose children are likely to go to
college only 9% of the children born in
the bottom income quartile complete a
four-year college degree and the lower
class also includes many Americans who
are living in poverty the US government
sets an income benchmark called the
federal poverty level a special that's
used in part to determine who's eligible
for public assistance programs like food
stamps or help with healthcare as of
2017 the federal poverty level for a
family of four is twenty four thousand
six hundred dollars and thirteen point
five percent of Americans live in
households below that the government
arrives at this figure by estimating the
minimum annual pre-tax income that's
needed to pay food shelter
transportation and clothing costs for a
given household size of course what's
poor in the United States won't be the
same as in another country the u.s.
federal poverty line is a measure of
relative poverty based on a standard of
living in the u.s. relative poverty is
used to describe a lack of resources
compared to others who have more but
absolute poverty is a lack of resources
that threatens durable
to survive the federal poverty level
gives us an indicator for which
Americans have the fewest resources and
lets us examine trends in groups that
are the most economically vulnerable for
example groups that can't work like
children the severely disabled in the
frail elderly are particularly
vulnerable to poverty but many working
Americans are vulnerable to poverty to
twelve percent of working age adults and
poverty work full-time and another 29
percent work part-time these are the
working poor you can see how it's quite
possible to work full-time and still
live in poverty when you do the math the
federal minimum wage in the United
States is $7.25 per hour a 40-hour
workweek for 50 weeks a year would net
an income of fourteen thousand five
hundred dollars which is well below the
poverty line for a family of four it's
hard enough to pull yourself out of
poverty on a low-wage income which is
partly why more than half of families in
poverty are headed by single mothers
higher rates of poverty among women
known as the feminization of poverty is
related to the increasing number of
women who are raising children on their
own and who work low wage jobs but in
addition to gender you can also look at
poverty by race contrary to popular
belief most poor Americans are not black
in fact two-thirds of the poor in the US
are white black Americans are however
more likely to be poor than white
Americans twenty four point one percent
of black Americans who make up about 13%
of the total American population we're
living in poverty in 2015 compared that
to eleven point six percent of white
Americans will make up about 77 percent
of the total population now the causes
of poverty are many and it's not easy to
understand why some groups are more
vulnerable than others America likes to
think of itself as a nation that values
self-reliance where anyone can succeed
and this view is partly why some argue
that poverty is the result of an
individual's own failings or of certain
cultural attitudes one of the most
famous proponents of this idea was
Daniel Patrick Moynihan former US
senator ambassador to the United Nations
and by trade associate us the report he
wrote while Secretary of Labor in the
Kennedy administration known as the
Moynihan report blamed high rates of
poverty among African Americans not on a
lack of Economic Opportunity but on
cultural factors in the black community
like high rates of birth outside of
marriage
by contrast American sociologist William
Julius Wilson who you might remember
from episode 7 has provided a counter to
this idea Wilson is documented how black
Americans are much more likely to face
institutional barriers to achieving
economic success and are more likely to
live in areas where
jobs are scarce he argues that in order
to understand poverty we have to look at
wider economic and social structure as
well as the history and culture of
racism in the West next week we'll talk
more about how social class structures
affect how Americans live their lives
but for now you learned about the five
different social classes in the United
States the upper class the upper-middle
class the average middle class the
working class and the lower class and we
discussed what poverty looks like in the
United States crash course sociology is
filmed in the doctor Cheryl C Kinney
studio in Missoula Montana and it's made
with the help of all of these nice
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