Sociology Electives Next Semester!

 

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3.02 From The Middle to Poverty

  HW:  Read this excerpt from Omi and Winant's Racial Formation

Today's lesson has 2 parts.  First, we examine what the "middle" class looks like.  Then, in part 2 we examine poverty.

Part 1:  The Middle

Putting the Dimensions of Class Together

All of the elements that we have been exploring combine to form a rough picture of social class.  There is not a universally accepted model for social class but income, wealth, education, location, prestige/power all can arguably play a part in determining class.

Using your knowledge of what the median American looks like, let's evaluate social class in America.  Think about these guiding questions as we go along today:

• What are the different classes in the US?
• Is there a middle class, and if so, what is it?

1.  After our introductory lessons to social class, what does the median American look like?  Please list the following median: 

wealth

income

education

location

prestige

2.   Knowing the median is the middle American (50th percentile), what is your opinion about how large should the middle class be?  That is, how much above the median and below the median should be considered the "middle class"?  (For example, should it be 80-20, 75-25, 60-40, or something else? And then what would you consider the other classes?  (There is no right answer here, just want to get you thinking.)

Gilbert's Model
Sociologists have used different models of social class to explain how social class disaggregates in the United States.  The table below is based on Hamilton College professor Dennis Gilbert's 1992 model of social class.  Look at the table and notice how Gilbert uses multiple measures (job, income, education)  to parse out the classes. 

3.  Which class do you think your family is, based on Gilbert's model?  Do all three components for your family fit his model?

4.  What do you think about Gilbert's model?  Any questions or criticisms?



Williams' Model

Another model for the class structure is from Dr. Joan Williams who wrote the book White Working Class; Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America.

Her article and her model of social class focus on these groups:

The "poor" class

• the bottom 30% 
• making less than 40K
• median income of $22K

The "working" class

• the middle 55%   
• approx. $41K - $131K
• median of $75K
• jobs may involve physical work, taking orders or implementing the work from managers
• thrives on morals and telling the truth even if the truth is offensive
• sees role as parent as a provider of essentials like safety, morals and wellness
• work as a means to an identity; I work so that I can...watch baseball, go fishing, etc...
• values independence, i.e. self-employment/owning own business
• Sees college as expensive and risky
• Sees professional/managerial jobs as distant and leaving family behind

The "professional-managerial elite" or "PME"

• the top 14% on earners and at least one college degree in household
• earns more than $131K per year 
• median of $173,000
• jobs involve advanced degrees such as MBA, JD, MD, and other doctorates
• work is making decisions and overseeing them for the company or business, but less about implementing the decisions 
• values outward appearance and fitting their role
• sees role as parent to provide opportunity to their kids
• identity is often based on work or title

Please read her article below or watch her Ted Talk:
Dr. Williams' book came out of an article she wrote about the 2016 election posted here in Harvard Business Review.

Watch the following TED Talk by Dr. Williams.  It is about 15min long, but it is insightful. 

Here is her Ted Talk:

 

5. After reading Williams' article posted here in Harvard Business Review or after watching the Ted Talk above, what do you think of her assessment of the contrast between the professional managerial elite class and the working class?  Do you understand why she is saying that this results in a political divide?

If you want to watch additional videos or a shorter one or see additional resources, check these out:

• Here is a 2 minute explanation by the author on Youtube.
• Here is a 4 minute interview with the author on Fox News.
• And Williams started a project to address the education divide called Diploma Divide.
• (Extra) For more about her work, see these:
• Review from Harvard Magazine here.
• Review from Financial Times.
• Review from Medium here.
• Powerpoint slides here.

Other sociologists that support Joan Williams' thesis:

Princeton University sociologist, Robert Wuthnow explains the dynamic that Joan Williams describes in his book The Left Behind; Decline and Rage in Rural America that location has strongly affected how rural Americans feel and how they vote.  

Here is a 2018 interview with Professor Wuthnow from Vox.

From Princeton U. Press:

What is fueling rural America’s outrage toward the federal government? Why did rural Americans vote overwhelmingly for Donald Trump? And, beyond economic and demographic decline, is there a more nuanced explanation for the growing rural-urban divide? Drawing on more than a decade of research and hundreds of interviews, Robert Wuthnow brings us into America’s small towns, farms, and rural communities to paint a rich portrait of the moral order — the interactions, loyalties, obligations, and identities—underpinning this critical segment of the nation. Wuthnow demonstrates that to truly understand rural Americans’ anger, their culture must be explored more fully. Wuthnow argues that rural America’s fury stems less from specific economic concerns than from the perception that Washington is distant from and yet threatening to the social fabric of small towns. Rural dwellers are especially troubled by Washington’s seeming lack of empathy for such small-town norms as personal responsibility, frugality, cooperation, and common sense. Wuthnow also shows that while these communities may not be as discriminatory as critics claim, racism and misogyny remain embedded in rural patterns of life.

Part 2: Poverty

In part 1, we examined the difficulty with defining "middle class" in the United States.  Today we will examine the bottom of the social class ladder, the Americans with the lowest incomes.  Remember that this unit is focused on the inequalities (both obstacles and opportunities) that come from different social class positions.  As the lesson goes on, please keep in mind these guiding questions:

• What are the difficulties in defining "poverty"?
• What are the obstacles associated with the lowest social classes?

Obviously, we saw that the U.S. has a wide range of income and a substantial number of citizens who are low income.  But how many of these low-income earners should be considered "poor"?  Experts talk about poverty in various ways.  This 2019 analysis from the Annie E. Casey Foundation explains some of the most common terms used to describe poverty in the United States today: official poverty measure and the supplemental poverty measure, as well as extreme poverty, low income, and concentrated poverty.

The simplest way to define poverty is an amount of income based on family size and the cost of food.  Most experts believe that the income level that the government has used as a threshold is too low and the actual number of Americans living in poverty should be much higher.  In any case, the official poverty measure threshold for a family of 4 in 2018 was $25,465.  About 12% of Americans fall into this threshold!  That's 39 million Americans!  Thirty. Nine. Million.  And that is the low end.  Most experts agree that actual poverty should be a much higher threshold.

Besides the official number, there are other ways of calculating the actual number of people in poverty and these measure report higher numbers of poverty.  And then there is a substantial number of Americans who do not qualify as impoverished but they are so low income that they are considered at-risk.  They are working and getting by, but barely.  One accident or unfortunate event can thrust them into poverty.

Playspent Online Simulation

Living in poverty means many Americans have to make hard choices about their lives.  Try the playspent website which guides readers through the difficult choices that those in poverty must make.  When finished, please reflect on the simulation.

6.  What happened in the simulation that made it difficult for you to be economically stable?  Was there something that came up during the simulation that you had not thought about before?   

Poverty and location

Poverty, like the other social classes, is segregated within the U.S. so we do not always notice it.  Click on the map here. 

7. What is the poverty rate for the United States?

8.  Looking at the United States as a whole, what areas of the country are the most impoverished?  

Now on the poverty map, click on either the county where you are from or the county that LUC is in: Cook (Hint: it is the county at the bottom left of Lake Michigan :-)

9.  Which county did you examine and what was the rate?

Effects of Poverty

Choose one of the areas below and review the evidence that shows how being low income affects the people in that area.  Then answer question 10.

• Health
• Location/environment
• Criminal Justice System

10. After reviewing either health, environment, or criminal justice (below), what evidence most stands out to you as a barrier/limitation or injustice for those living in poverty.

Health

Americans with low income have a higher chance of dying at any age than a wealthy person!  

Some of the evidence that supports and explains this claim:

Lots of health disparities are cited at the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality. 

Unnatural causes is a website and documentary about the connection between social class and health;

UNNATURAL CAUSES is the acclaimed documentary series broadcast by PBS and now used by thousands of organizations around the country to tackle the root causes of our alarming socio-economic and racial inequities in health.
The four-hour series crisscrosses the nation uncovering startling new findings that suggest there is much more to our health than bad habits, health care, or unlucky genes. The social circumstances in which we are born, live, and work can actually get under our skin and disrupt our physiology as much as germs and viruses.
Among the clues:

• It's not CEOs dropping dead from heart attacks, but their subordinates.

• Poor smokers are at higher risk of disease than rich smokers.

• Recent Latino immigrants, though typically poorer, enjoy better health than the average American. But the longer they're here, the worse their health becomes.

Furthermore, research has revealed a gradient to health. At each step down the class pyramid, people tend to be sicker and die sooner. Poor Americans die on average almost six years sooner than the rich. No surprise. But even middle class Americans die two years sooner than the rich. And at each step on that pyramid, African Americans, on average, fare worse than their white counterparts. In many cases, so do other peoples of color.

But why? How can class and racism disrupt our physiology? Through what channels might inequities in housing, wealthy, jobs, and education, along with a lack of power and control over one's life, translate into bad health? What is it about our poor neighborhoods, especially neglected neighborhoods of color, that is so deadly? How are the behavioral choices we make (such as diet and exercise) constrained by the choices we have?

From Voices For Illinois Children, we see that the number of children in poverty has been increasing and the effects can be very damaging; 

Growing up in poverty can have serious and long-lasting effects on children’s health, development, and overall well-being. The effects of poverty have a well-documented impact on young children’s developing brains. And children who grow up in poverty are more likely to experience harmful levels of stress, more likely to struggle in school, and more likely to have behavioral, social, and emotional problems than their peers.

Lead poisoning from the American Journal of Pediatrics;

Impoverished black children, for example, are twice as likely as poor Hispanic or white children to have levels of lead in their blood that is at least 2.5 micrograms per deciliter. Some researchers have found that even that small amount of lead is enough to cause cognitive impairment in children — especially the kind that impacts their reading ability.

Cardiovascular disease 

from the National Institute of Health (NIH), Journal of Nutrition (2010); 

Food insecurity was associated with self-reported hypertension and hyperlipidemia. Food insecurity was associated with laboratory or examination evidence of hypertension and diabetes. The association with laboratory evidence of diabetes did not reach significance in the fully adjusted model unless we used a stricter definition of food insecurity. These data show that food insecurity is associated with cardiovascular risk factors. Health policy discussions should focus increased attention on ability to afford high-quality foods for adults with or at risk for chronic disease.

 from the NIH, journal of Current Cardiology Reviews (2009); 

Once homeless, equitable access to both preventative and remedial health care is lacking and is associated with a higher than average burden of cardiovascular disease [CVD] risk factors, morbidity and mortality and is accompanied by disproportionately high health care costs.

Less access to healthcare, from the NIH, Journal of Community Health (2018);

Having a low-income presents a variety of problems for families and children, with access to health care being the most complex and prevalent. Although there are many challenges for low-income families to access adequate health care in the United States, the key barriers identified in this review of literature are a lack of education, complications with health insurance, and a distrust of health care providers. Each obstacle is influenced by a myriad of factors that affect vulnerable sub-groups of low-income families. Acknowledging the barriers that prevent access to health care for low-income families is the first step towards determining future sustainable solutions.

Affects brain development from the UW Madison, Institute for Research on Poverty (2019);

Ongoing research, however, is moving beyond correlation to test a causal relationship between growing up in poverty and development in key parts of the brain that govern learning and behavior. Findings suggest that aspects of poverty that affect brain development go beyond limited financial resources to include neighborhood violence, low-quality schools, environmental toxins, and unstable family life. 

Increased levels of stress, mental illness, suicide, and substance abuse from the Journal of the American Medical Association (2011);

Low levels of household income are associated with several lifetime mental disorders and suicide attempts, and a decrease in income is associated with a higher risk for anxiety, substance use, and mood disorders, according to a new study.

The connection between poverty and diabetes including obesity and poor diet and sedentary lifestyle from the American Diabetes Association;

One reason may be that violence tracks with poverty, thereby preventing people from being active out-of-doors. Similarly, parks and sports facilities are less available to people living in poor counties (5), and people who live in poverty-dense regions may be less able to afford gym membership, sports clothing, and/or exercise equipment. There are multiple individual and environmental reasons to explain why poverty-dense counties may be more sedentary and bear greater obesity burdens.

Environment 

From the CDC, here is an explanation of the social determinants of health;

Conditions in the places where people live, learn, work, and play affect a wide range of health risks and outcomes.1 These conditions are known as social determinants of health (SDOH).We know that poverty limits access to healthy foods and safe neighborhoods and that more education is a predictor of better health.2,3,4 We also know that differences in health are striking in communities with poor SDOH such as unstable housing, low income, unsafe neighborhoods, or substandard education.

From the NIH International Journal on Environment and Public Health, 

...early-life exposures to nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a marker of traffic-related pollution, and fine particulate matter (PM2.5), a mixture of industrial and other pollutants, are positively associated with subsequent childhood asthma diagnosis...

From Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Scientific American documents numerous particulates of air pollution containing more hazardous ingredients in non-white and low-income communities than in affluent white ones, a new study shows.

From the Huffington Post, the poor are more likely to experience asthma and other health issues.  

From the Florida Times Union;

...poor black children are more likely than poor white or Hispanic children to be diagnosed with asthma — another ailment that plagues poor children in Jacksonville and one that is linked to living in older, more industrialized areas. Poor white children, though, are more likely to be exposed to secondhand smoke, or to be born to mothers who smoked during pregnancy than poor black or Hispanic children. And poor Hispanic children, it found, are twice as likely to have no place to go for health care, as compared to poor white or black children.

Less access to healthy food (i.e. fruits and vegetables) from Reuters

Ron Finley, guerrilla gardener, TED talk about being arrested for planting a vegetable garden in a poor neighborhood.

 

 

And Clint Smith, a Washington DC teacher explains in his slam poem the ways that location affects his students.  As you watch, make a list of the ways that location affects them:

Criminal Justice
Poor people are more likely to enter the criminal justice system and remain there.

Loyola's 2022 New Student Convocation featured keynote speaker Reuben Jonathon Miller, Loyola alum, and professor at University of Chicago.  Miller highlighted the many ways that the criminal justice system creates obstacles for those who enter it.  You can read more about Miller's work from NPR here.

This has been published about since 1979's The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison

This is one revelation in William Chambliss's study called "The Saints and the Roughnecks" Chambliss argues that money was a key factor in preventing kids from getting into trouble. If you have enough money it helps you cover up the deviance. Do you think this applies to kids at our school (no names please). Who is deviant? How do they hide it? Does money play a role? Is everyone at school a "saint"? Another important revelation in Chambliss's research is that the kids who accept the label of "deviant" then act upon that label. In other words, if I think that everyone expects me to be deviant, I may accept that as the truth and then I act deviant. Once you are labeled as "deviant", that becomes a stigma or a badge of disgrace that you carry with you. Sociologists who study this perspective call it the labeling theory.

From Spotlight on Poverty and Georgetown University Law Professor, Peter Edelmen's book, Not A Crime To Be Poor;

In one of the richest countries on Earth it has effectively become a crime to be poor. For example, in Ferguson, Missouri, the U.S. Department of Justice didn’t just expose racially biased policing; it also exposed exorbitant fines and fees for minor crimes that mainly hit the city’s poor, African American population, resulting in jail by the thousands. As Peter Edelman explains in Not a Crime to Be Poor, in fact Ferguson is everywhere: the debtors’ prisons of the twenty-first century. The anti-tax revolution that began with the Reagan era led state and local governments, starved for revenues, to squeeze ordinary people, collect fines and fees to the tune of 10 million people who now owe $50 billion.

Nor is the criminalization of poverty confined to money. Schoolchildren are sent to court for playground skirmishes that previously sent them to the principal’s office. Women are evicted from their homes for calling the police too often to ask for protection from domestic violence. The homeless are arrested for sleeping in the park or urinating in public.

The chart below from the Bureau of Justice Statistics shows the different stages of the criminal justice system. In each stage, a person of lower social class is more likely to progress through the system than a person of upper social class.

From the Prison Policy Initiative: 

Far from offering people a "second chance," our criminal justice system frequently punishes those who never had a first chance: people in poverty. By focusing law enforcement on low-level offenses and subjecting criminal defendants to money bail and other fees, our country effectively punishes people for being poor.

Poverty is not only a predictor of involvement with the justice system: Too often, it is also the outcome. Criminal punishment subjects people to countless fines, fees, and other costs (often enriching private companies in the process). A criminal record, meanwhile, does lasting collateral damage.

From Equal Justice Under the Law

POVERTY IN OUR JUSTICE SYSTEM IS TOO OFTEN TREATED AS A CRIMINAL OFFENSE.  

Take driver’s licenses for instance: A driver with a busted tail light will be assessed a fine. For many living in poverty, they cannot afford to pay. If left unpaid, most states will eventually suspend the driver’s license.

Unless the person lives in a city with reliable public transportation, they will have to keep driving to stay employed – putting themselves at higher risk of punishment. Driving on a suspended license leads to additional suspension time and fines, a criminal record, and possible jail time. A simple lack of money can have devastating impacts on one’s livelihood.

The collateral consequences do not end there. Someone who can’t drive has a hard time staying employed or finding another job. A study in New Jersey showed that 42% of drivers who had suspended licenses lost their jobs and could not readily find another. Eligibility for public housing is restricted or denied if the applicant has a criminal record, including misdemeanors such as driving with a suspended license. Local public housing authorities can be even more restrictive and evict occupants if a member of their family or another person residing in commits a crime, such as a misdemeanor drug offense.

For someone with low income, having a busted tail light leads to criminal consequences, loss of employment, and even homelessness.

From the American Bar Association,

In the United States, wealth, not culpability, often shapes outcomes. From what is defined as criminal behavior to how penalties are decided, our legal system punishes people who are poor in America far more often and more harshly than the wealthy.

No person in America should be locked up because they are poor. Yet, every day we see homeless people arrested for sleeping outside; parents who can’t afford to purchase their release from jail; and people who cycle in and out of jail because they can’t afford to pay old fines as their debt grows from new ones. Meanwhile, cities and counties fill their coffers from the fines and fees that are imposed on people who are struggling just to survive. We need a criminal justice system that puts people over profit and helps to make vulnerable people more stable, not less stable.

Housing and Eviction

Housing and living expenses cost more if you are poor, from the ASA's Society Pages, 

Social science research demonstrates that the poor pay more for necessities like housing and food, and debt can have serious consequences beyond just financial. The poor pay significantly more for housing than others — sometimes 70% or 80% of their income. In 2018, low-income households paid over half their income for rent or lived in substandard housing. Further, landlords overcharge tenants in high poverty neighborhoods and those with higher concentrations of African Americans relative to the market value of the property. When families cannot afford basic needs they will make calculated tradeoffs to keep their housing, paying for rent instead of utilities to avoid eviction. Such tradeoffs often lead to compounded costs from late fees, and families living without water, electricity, or heat....Poor families tend to pay more for food, too....When poor people face fines and fees, their inability to pay or keep up with payments means they go further into debt. When these fees are part of the criminal justice system, failure to pay can also result in jail time.

Evicted by Matthew Desmond  

The award-winning book Evicted from Harvard sociologist Matthew Desmond shows how society profits off the poor and how lack of housing can lead families to spiral downward.

In this groundbreaking book, Harvard sociologist and 2015 MacArthur “Genius” Award winner Matthew Desmond takes readers into the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee, where families spend most of their income on housing and where eviction has become routine—a vicious cycle that deepens our country’s vast inequality. Based on years of embedded fieldwork and painstakingly gathered data, Evicted transforms our understanding of extreme poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving a devastating, uniquely American problem.

Mercy Housing provides 6 ways that being poor costs more.

5.  What is one of the factors above (from either health, environment, criminal justice or housing) that you had not realized before?  Can you see how these factors make it difficult to rise out of poverty?

Poverty and Stigma

Morality and Health: News Media Constructions of Overweight and Eating Disorders (2010) by Abigail C. Saguy, Kjerstin Gruys Social Problems, Volume 57, Issue 2, 1 May 2010, Pages 231–250.

From the abstract:

In the contemporary United States, thinness is associated with high social status and taken as evidence of moral virtue. In contrast, fatness is linked to low status and seen as a sign of sloth and gluttony....news media in our sample typically discuss how a host of complex factors beyond individual control contribute to anorexia and bulimia. In that anorexics and bulimics are typically portrayed as young white women or girls, this reinforces cultural images of young white female victims. In contrast, the media predominantly attribute overweight to bad individual choices and tend to treat binge eating disorder as ordinary and blameworthy overeating. In that the poor and minorities are more likely to be heavy, such reporting reinforces social stereotypes of fat people, ethnic minorities, and the poor as out of control and lazy.

Other Resources:

Here is a link to the Stanford Center on Poverty where you can view slides about inequality in the USA.

Here is a link to 15 statistics about inequality in America.

Here is a an article from the Washington Post explaining the difficulty of defining the middle class.

Different types of poverty (suburban, urban, rural/climate-caused, ):
The Line, MediaEd documentary (2015) 48 minutes
Documentary about the varied types of people living at the poverty line.  The first two are from Chicagoland.  One is a white suburban Dad who lives in the western suburbs.  The next is a black woman living in the city who moves to Oak Park.  

Children in poverty:
Poor Kids, Frontline documentary (2017).  54 minutes online at PBS.
Twenty percent of the children in the US are growing up in poverty! That's 1 out of every 5 kids in the United States is living at the poverty level! Yes, you read that correctly - 1 out of every 5 children in the United States is living in poverty right now!  That's a higher rate than 34 out of 35 Western countries.  

Here is an update from 2019 about how the families are doing 2 years after the end of the movie.

Rural poverty:
Children of the Mountain (2009), 49 minutes.

Diane Sawyer did a special report on Appalachia that highlighted the children affected by poverty. I think there is a tendency for us to blame the adults for their impoverished situation, but we forget that these adults were once children born into a world of difficulties and obstacles that led to an adulthood of poverty. You can hear Diane Sawyer talk about it here. Can you use your sociological imagination to see all of the social forces that limit those who are in poverty in America? Watch the excerpt below from 20/20 to see the complicated life of the rural impoverished American:

After you have thought about your own personal example, classify the four people in this Esquire article and analyze what class they are and why?  Try to use components other than income.  How is each person shaped by their social class?

11. Any questions about social class or poverty before we move on to the next dimension of inequality?

3.01 Social Class: I'll bet you... wealth, income, education, location, power and prestige

Today we are gambling in class!

Before Starting
What are the chances of winning a coin flip?

Everyone starts with three coins, what do you think will happen as the contest goes on?

Rules:

• Everyone will get 3 pennies.
• You must find someone to wager against and continue wagering.
• Take turns flipping and wagering (one person picks the wager and one calls heads/tails).
• When I pause the action, be sure to count your coins and be counted!

    Charting the distribution of coins

 

 round        1        2        3        4        5

#coins

    0

    1-3

    4-6

    7-9

    10-12

    13+

BEGIN WAGERING!

Debriefing
The exercise was a metaphor for social class.

The exercise resembles real life in a number of ways:

Americans Believe that the Economic System is Fair and Equal
What is the chance of winning a coin toss?

Was this simulation fair? 

Like life in the U.S., the  exercise had the appearance of being fair and equal - everyone had a 50% chance of winning.  The U.S. is an open system - not a caste system or closed system like a monarchy or apartheid.  Our system gives the impression that everyone has an equal chance and that the system is fair.  The coin flip metaphor seems like everyone has a 50-50 chance to succeed.  This is true for U.S. society too.  From Jen Hochschild's book, Facing Up to the American Dream,  Americans believe in the "American dream;" success is attainable for anyone.  However, just like real life, the coin game takes a little luck.  If you are lucky enough to be born in wealth, it is an advantage just like being lucky to win early in the game.

The Difficulty of Defining Middle Class
Most Americans claim to be in the middle class.  People making $30K per year to people making $200K per year claim to be in the middle class.  Because Americans hate the idea of a class system, most Americans prefer to think of themselves as middle class.  This 2015 article from Smithsonian Magazine details a number of sources that show Americans like to believe that they are middle class.  However, rather than being a society of equality or a society of people in the middle, America has the highest rate of poverty among the 17 leading industrial nations.  Most wealth is at the top in the hands of very few people and most people are at the bottom with very littleHowever, defining the middle is difficult because there is so much money skewed to the top and there are so many people at the bottom.  Even though the game has the appearance of being an equal 50-50 chance, the rules favor a channeling of wealth to the top.  Every time we play this, the outcome is similar: most money at the top and most people at the bottom with very little money.  This is true in real life as well as the metaphor.  The wealth distribution in the U.S. resembles a Lorenze curve (here):

Compare this graph to a graph of the coin distribution at the end of the game.

Some of the specific similarities include:

• How difficult it is to define the middle class.
• The huge disparity between those at the top and those at the bottom.
• The large number of Americans who have no wealth/no coins.

The longer we play the game, the more skewed the outcome becomes

From the Economic Policy Institute,
Most Americans believe that a rising tide should lift all boats—that as the economy expands, everybody should reap the rewards. And for two-and-a-half decades beginning in the late 1940s, this was how our economy worked. Over this period, the pay (wages and benefits) of typical workers rose in tandem with productivity (how much workers produce per hour). In other words, as the economy became more efficient and expanded, everyday Americans benefited correspondingly through better pay. But in the 1970s, this started to change.

Social class inequality in the U.S. is growing and has been for decades.  This growth is profoundly shaping the United States even though few seem to recognize it.  Economic inequality is influenced by many factors, including the economy, public policy and social changes.  The last several decades, income inequality has been growing.  The highest earning Americans have continued to earn more and more over the last 50 years, while the lower earners have earned closer to about the same.

Social Class Components (aka "Rules") Create a Similar Skew of Social Class

The "rules" of our society help to create that dynamic. By "rules" I mean the opportunities and obstacles that are embedded into our system, especially wealth, income, education, location.  All of these components both exemplify social class inequality and they exacerbate it.  Please read about each element below.  Remember to think about what an average American looks like and how your family compares.  I want you to have a better understanding of where your family fits compared to the average American when the lesson is finished.

Wealth

Wealth is tricky to understand.  It is everything that a household owns, such as the home, vacation home, cars, 401K, savings, stocks, jewelry, etc...But, you must subtract what the household owes.  So, if my house is $200,000 but I owe $160,000 then my wealth is only $40,000 on the house.  The biggest way that wealth adds to social class is through passive income.  The wealthiest Americans own investments that generate income for them such as stocks, real estate, and securities.  Often, money earned through these investments is taxed at a lower rate than direct income.  

One way to examine wealth is through quintiles (20% increments);  If you lined all the households up in the U.S. by wealth, what percentage would the top 20% own? And then the next 20% and so on...Another way to think about this is if you have 5 people who are sharing a pie, what percent of the pie does the first person get, and the second person and third, etc...  CBS explains wealth with a pie here.

Try the following exercise on your own:

First, hypothesize, how much of the wealth (the pie) in the U.S. do you think each quintile (person) has:
Bottom 20%:______   2nd 20%_______  3rd 20%________  4th 20%_______ 5th 20%_______Top
(least)                                                                                                                                             (most)

Second, write how much you think each quintile should have?
Bottom 20%:______   2nd 20%________ 3rd 20%________  4th 20%_______ 5th 20%_______Top

After you have finished answering the questions above, watch this video:


What is the reality?  How is the wealth actually divided?





1.  How does your guess about wealth compare to how it is actually distributed?   (Here is the Google form for this lesson - I recommend opening this in a new window and then answer each question after you read the info.)

This video from the ST. Louis Fed also explains the disparity in wealth in the US (2019).


The overall conclusion about wealth is that the disparity of wealth is greater than that of income (see the pie graph below).  The top 1% of America owns 34% of everything.  The top 10% owns 70%.  And half of America owns 96% of everything.  In other words, the bottom half, 50% of America, owns almost nothing.  They have no money saved - for retirement or otherwise.  Once you deduct their debts, they have almost no equity - from their homes, or possessions, or bank accounts.  

The average wealth of Americans
From DQYDJ (Don't Quit Your Day Job)

... is a finance and investing website founded in 2009 that posts about investing and adds interactive features, tools, and calculators to their posts.

The DQYDJ 2020 analysis of wealth in America calculates the median net wealth for Americans at $121,000:

The median is up from this 2010 Huffington Post report which analyzed a Congressional Research Bulletin about wealth, "The median household net worth -- the level at which half the households have more and half have less -- was $77,300"  For a much more detailed analysis of wealth, see this post from business insider.

Proxies for wealth

It might be difficult to know how much wealth your family has, so here is a different way to think about it:

How does your family or community compare to the "average" American?

Average American:   

• 90% own 1 car, 50% own 2 cars (actual average is 1.8 cars per household),   
• 50% have a 401K, 
• 66% own 1 home, (only 6% own a second home like a condo or lake house).

How does your family's wealth compare to the average American?  Feel free to comment on any of the above stats, or a combination of them:

• how much the total household net worth is
• cars
• 401K
• owning a house or second home

Here is the wealth distribution in the US from 1990 to 2021 from Statista:

Here are six facts from the Brookings Institute about wealth in the USA (2019)

Here are PEW trends in wealth and income from 2020:

Inequality.org explains the rising wealth inequality, even during the pandemic.

Wealth creates opportunity for passive income, the next component of social class.

Social Class Component #2:  Income

What is income and what are some different types of income?

The first component of social class that we will examine is income.  Income is usually what Americans think of first when they think of social class.  Income is how much money a person or household takes in each year.  Income can come from different sources.  It can be hourly wages such as a secretary or construction worker that makes $25 per hour and they only get paid for the hours they work.  Or it can be a salary like a teacher or a manager who makes a salary of $75,000 per year, regardless of the number of hours they work.  A third type of income is from capital gains which are profits made off of investments.  An example of capital gains might be a stock trader who buys Apple stock at $100 per share and then sells it 2 years later for $200 per share.

What is the typical American family income?

What do you think the median household income in the United States is - please guess if you are not sure.
(Median is the middle, whereas mean is the average).


2.  What is the actual median household income?


Click on the Census Data finder here and search "income".  Here is 2021 Data:

3.  How do you think your family compares to the average income?  Higher or lower? By how much?  If you do not know what your family's income is (or if you are not comfortable writing about it, use the average incomes below)

 

This 2014 graph from NPR shows the way occupations fall into various income levels.  The graphic is posted below, but if you click on the link it will allow you to highlight occupations that fall into more than one income level.

If you don't know your parents' incomes but you know their jobs, you can use this 2010 graph (below), which displays the income inequality by occupation.  The actual incomes may have gone up since then, but the relative placement has not changed much.  Notice where the median is.

Income by percentile

Another way to examine income is through percentile.

This link provides percentile data from the website dqydj.com (don't quit your day job). 

Here is the 2022 data:

Note the difference between median and mean and the resemblance to the curve from our coin flipping activity.

Four Pillar Freedom gives an overview (2019) of income by percentile.

Income by Zipcode - Census Data Finder

Here is a snapshot of Loyola and the surrounding neighborhoods.

North of Sheridan/Devon

South of Sheridan/Devon

What percentile would the income from these neighborhoods be nationally?

Income inequality has been growing

Here is Income Inequality from inequality.org.  One graph showing that income inequality has grown to levels of the gilded age:

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities published this report with this graph detailing the rising inequality.

This 2017 NY Times editorial explains the rising inequality in one chart, from David Leonhardt Seen below.
The grey line is how much that percentile group's income grew from 1945-1980.

The red line is how much that percentile group's income grew from 1979 - 2014.

Note that more recently, the highest income earners experienced the greatest gains in income.  But it used to be the opposite - the lowest earners were making the highest gains.

This post from Slate details how there was much income inequality during the beginning of the 20th century, then the inequality lessened known as the great compression (1940-1980) followed by a growth in income inequality known as the great divergence (1980 - present).

Another resource for income is from the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED)  You can search for real income (adjusted for inflation) in multiple years for comparison.  Here is a graph showing the real income from 1984 to the most recent data.

Despite the growing inequality in income, Americans are working more than ever.  The graph below from PEW shows the share of households who have two income earners from 1960 to 2012.   Families are busier and working more, but earning less and less of a share of the income in the U.S.

Policies affecting growing income inequality

So, income has been becoming more unequal, but government policies can affect this inequality.  For example, some of the highest income earners actually pay less in taxes than middle income earners!  From the Tax Policy Center, this chart (below) shows that higher income earners pay more of their taxes as capital gains taxes which are taxed at a lower rate than the majority of Americans who pay income taxes at a higher rate.

This chart (below) from Visualizing Economics shows the rate that capital gains have been taxed compared to other taxes.  Note capital gains have always  been taxed at less than income tax.  And what this chart does not show is that if you can earn all of your money by capital gains and declare no income, then you can reduce your capital gains tax to zero! If you find the chart or all of the tax talk confusing, simply know this: Some of the highest income earners in the U.S. can pay the less income tax than the average American.  And, as tax rates have fallen since the 1950s, inequality has gone up.  The higher tax rates allowed the government to provide loans for college, small businesses and buying homes, and the taxes fueled projects that created jobs like building infrastructure such as highways, airports and the power grid, and even Red Rocks Amphitheater.

And this 2023 NPR story explains that many millionaires realize that the tax system is not fair and they would like to see that change.

Social Class Component 3: Education 

What percentage of U.S. adults do you think have a college degree?

Here is a link to the Census data regarding education where you can search by municipality or zip code to see what the median educational level is.

Did you realize that so few people have a bachelor's degree or higher?  Does any of this surprise you?

Where does your family fall in terms of educational level? The median American educational level is some college, but no degree.  Is the educational level in your family higher or lower and by how much?

Parent Education = Children's Future Education 

Parents' educational levels correlate with children's educational attainment.  The graph below shows that the less education that parents have, the less education their children obtain.  In other words, if parents don't have a college degree, the child is not likely to attain a college degree and visa-versa; parents with an advanced degree are more likely to have children who attain an advanced degree themselves.

Below is another way of showing the educational level of parents (on the left) influences the level of college education their children get (center) and what social class the children end up in (right) from Daniel Laurison on Twitter:

4.  What are some conclusions or questions you have about how parent educational level affects children's educational probability?

Education = Income

Not only is education level stratified, but the family's educational level determines, on average what the family's income will be (on average).   In other words, the higher your education is, the more money one is likely to earn.  Link to College Board 2016 research report here.  The graph below shows how median income goes up for each level of education, even if you factor in income taxes (which also go up):

Here is a 2011 post from sociological images that has a lot of info showing the connection between your degree and your income, especially that more than any other factor, educational level contributes to lifetime income earnings and the earnings gap gets wider over time.

Income = test scores

So, not only does more education mean more income, the more income means higher scores on standardized tests (which could mean a better education).  See the data below.  This link shows that on average, the higher a family's income, the higher the ACT score.

5.  What are some of the reasons that higher-income might lead to higher test scores?

 

Kohn and Lareau

Family shapes people differently based on the social class of the family.  Melvin Kohn and Annette Lareau are two of the more noted researchers who studied families and social class.  Their research found that parents from working-class households emphasize following rules and discipline while upper-middle-class parents teach their kids to take risks, negotiate, and think creatively.  Sociologist Annette Lareau explains these differences in her research.  Her book, Unequal Childhoods is explained in the Atlantic here.  And there is an excerpt available here.

Lareau identifies these two styles:

Concerted Cultivation: The parenting style, favored by middle-class families, in which parents encourage negotiation and discussion and the questioning of authority, and enroll their children in extensive organized activity participation. This style helps children in middle-class careers, teaches them to question people in authority, develops a large vocabulary, and makes them comfortable in discussions with people of authority. However, it gives the children a sense of entitlement.

Accomplishment of Natural Growth: The parenting style, favored by working-class and lower-class families, in which parents issue directives to their children rather than negotiations, encourage the following and trusting of people in authority positions, and do not structure their children's daily activities, but rather let the children play on their own. This method has benefits that prepare the children for a job in "working" class jobs, teaches the children to respect and take the advice of people in authority, and allows the children to become independent at a younger age.

Student discussion:

Why do you think each social class shapes kids these ways?  Brainstorm your own hypothesis here.

Analyze either your family or a family you know - which style do you think they are and why?  Can you give a specific example?

Conclusions or questions about the reciprocal connection between education and income?

Higher Income = More Elite College (from no college all the way to the Ivies)

People from different social classes are more likely to interact together at college.  From The Upshot of  NY Times, this interactive site allows you to see what percent of students from the top 1% and bottom 60% attend each school of higher education.  You can click on the link above to search your own schools and see more data, but below are two images from the link.

First, this image shows in general that the more income a family has (left side y-axis), the more elite the school that their kids attend:

And the list below shows how schools rank in terms of students from the top 1% of income compared to the number of students from the bottom 60%:

Not only is educational level shaped by parents' social class, but even the major that a student chooses is too.  This research from Natasha Quadlin shows that the major a student chooses at college is influenced by social class,

"...income gaps between fields are often larger than gaps between those with college degrees and those without them. Natasha Quadlin finds that this gap is in many ways due to differences in funding at the start of college that determine which majors students choose....She finds that students who pay for college with loans are more likely to major in applied non-STEM fields, such as business and nursing, and they are less likely to be undeclared. However, students whose funding comes primarily from grants or family members are more likely to choose academic majors like sociology or English and STEM majors like biology or computer science."

Matchmaking and Education

Besides the likelihood of meeting friends and potential spouses at college, there are specific apps and websites to help matchmake couples from Ivy League+ schools.  This 2019 Harvard Gazette article reviews three of them including:  

• BluesMatch, a company based in London that matches Oxford, Cambridge, and Ivy League graduates, said it makes sense that as people experience search fatigue from broad, impersonal online dating pools, they’re drawn to sites that narrow the field by matching users’ interests or backgrounds. “People get tired of using Tinder or Match because there are too many people,” said Law during a Skype chat from London. “And they often don’t have the level of conversation that someone from Oxford or the Ivy League gets excited by.”
• Elegant Introductions out of Miami, are matchmakers for a clientele based in Miami and Boston. Most of their clients, said Gold, are highly educated and professionally successful, are involved in their community, appreciate the arts, and have been screened to make sure they are who they say they are. Applicants have to show proof of an Ivy League degree.

Additionally, if you are interested:

Elite Colleges Constantly Tell Low-Income Students That They Do Not Belong from Clint Smith in the Atlantic.


How Admissions Really Work: If The College Admissions Scandal Shocked You, Read this from NPR.

There are lots of ways that wealthy families get a boost in the college admissions process. Most are quite legal.

Paul Tough's book, The Years That Matter Most is a deep-dive sociological look into college and social class.  From the NY Times book review, 

"... today, whether you graduate from college is largely determined by your parents’ income. In the United States, 77 percent of children born into the top income quartile will earn a degree by age 24, but for the bottom quartile that number is a mere 9 percent. The implications are clear: The education system isn’t transforming the lives of those who need it most; it is dispensing ever more opportunity to those who need it least."

Social Class Component 4: Prestige and Power

People view different occupations with different levels of prestige.  This prestige can translate to real power such as being appointed to boards or committees.  It can also simply give you credibility or respect in social situations.  

What is the median prestige job in this data?  

Where does your family's prestige rating fall compared to this?

Power, according to Max Weber, is the ability to impose one's will on others.  Weber focused on three ways that power shows up in everyday life:

• Traditional authority - power because of social or cultural tradition like royalty or religious leaders
• Rational-Legal authority - power from law and legitimacy of the state such as judges and police 
• Charismatic authority - power that comes from personal qualities that create influence over people such as Kim Kardashian or Michael Strehan

One example of power is how the world's most powerful leaders gather in secret meetings annually to discuss how they can shape policy, economics and laws among other things. One such meeting is the American Enterprise Institute is one example of an annual meeting which is a private, off-the-record meeting held every year.  Another meeting is the Bilderberg meeting.

Some examples of power are the abilities to keep yourself out of jail, influence politicians and enact laws that you favor:

Here is one example from The Daily Show comparing teachers and Wall Street Investors.  Can you guess who has the power?  Video is available at Youtube here.

Here is a link to a Washington Post article explaining that wealthy Americans use their power to create favorable government policies.

This 2019 ProPublica report found that the IRS is LESS likely to audit wealthier Americans because it is more costly and difficult.

And this article from the NY Times shows that an executive at United Airlines accused of corruption charges was forced to resign. Imagine if a teacher was accused of corruption and was forced to resign. That would be it - out of a job and no compensation. But,

United filed a report with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday indicating that Mr. Smisek would receive nearly $4.9 million in a separation payment, and 60,000 shares of stock, valued at over $3 million.

Some more local examples of a contrast in power among wealthy and powerful compared to low income and powerless:

Compare this story to the cheating scandal in the video above.

Check this post for an explanation of drug busts at different schools including here.

Choose one of the examples above.  Which did you choose and what is the power being exerted?  

Social Class Component 5: Location

The next component of social class is location.  

The Median Metro Area
Examining the largest 384 metro areas in the United States,  our area, Chicago is the 3rd most populous at 9 million people.  The median metro area is #192 - it is the 2nd largest city in Arkansas; Can you name it? Can you guess how many people are in the city? The total metropolitan area?

4.  What is the size of the median metro area in the United States?

5.  How does our metro area compare to the median?

Location and where College Grads Move

WSJ data shows where college grads are likely to move after they graduate.  Here is one example of where LUC grads move:

 Open this post to see the rest of the data.

Try to make your own conclusions about the data:

6.  Where do college grads tend to move?

7.  How do you think where college grads move affects social class in the U.S.?

Educational Attainment in America Map

Another source of evidence regarding social class, education and location is an interactive version of the map below.   The map was created by a geographer using existing data are from the 2011-2015 American Community Survey Table B15003, distributed by NHGIS. 

Here is a picture of northern Illinois:

Here is a picture of Chicago's northside:

(Data preparation was completed in the R and Python programming languages, with heavy reliance on the arcpy site package via ArcGIS Pro and the sf R package. The map itself is hosted by Mapbox and designed with Mapbox GL JS and dimple.js.  Major features of the map are described here.)

Where do you see segregation by educational attainment? 

 This article by Business Insider highlights some conclusions about educational segregation based on the interactive version of the map above.

Home Price, Location and Social Class

The price of a home depends on a lot more than the physical structure of the home.  

From Business Insider the average home price varies considerably from state to state.  For example, West VA was the lowest with an average home price of $108K and California was one of the highest at $554K.  The average for Illinois was $202K.  

From FRED, (Federal Reserve Economic Data) click here for the median home price.

Here is the median home price from Statista.

Location and home price:

City-data has census data by census track including the average home price (as well as income and other data).

How do you think your home's value compares to the average home price?  (Remember from the wealth section above, the average American owns a home.)


Location and health

This post explains the connection of location to college education.

This research from Harvard shows that zipcode is a better predictor for health than genetic code.

And Clint Smith, a Washington DC teacher explains in his slam poem the ways that location affects his students.  As you watch, make a list of the ways that location affects them:

Location is also related to mobility:

An online data tool called Opportunity Atlas finds a strong correlation between where people are raised and their chances of achieving the American dream.
Here is an NPR piece explaining it.
Here is the NY Times Upshot explaining it.
Opportunity Insights provides data about how neighborhoods shape residents' life chances.

Here are maps showing the wide variation of opportunity from the national to the local levels:

This report from NPR's Planet Money details how where you grow up can affect your income later in life.

And here is a video and stats from CNN Money that show how where you grow up limits or benefits you.

• What does the median or average American look like in terms of social class?
• How does this compare to your own unique experience(s)?
• How do all of these components of social class connect to each other to either limit or advantage those in them?