Social Class System

America’s classes appear to be split up in three sections: Upper, Middle, and Lower class. People categorize each other depending on what they wear, where they live, who they associate with, and what jobs they have. Income and wealth have a substantial part of the American class.

Despite the debates about social class, the United States is usually described as having four major social classes, the elite or upperclass, the middle class, the working class, and the lower class (Goldscmidt). Classes are generally differentiated by income, education, and occupation although other factors do have an effect. The upperclass consists of about 1% of the population making 750,000 dollars or more a year as investors, top executives, or heirs to large fortunes (Hughes and Jenkins). There tends to be no question about who is in the upperclass as they are pretty clearly isolated in their power and wealth. The middle class makes up about 40% of the population making anywhere from 40,000 to 749,999 dollars a year (Hughes and Jenkins). The large disparity in income and wealth have led to a further division of this class into upper-middle class and middle class in some circles. The middle class usually work white collar jobs as professionals and managers, however some highly skilled blue collar workers are included. Those in the middle class have usually obtained higher education degrees and place a high value on individual responsibility for one’s class (Goldschmidt). The working class is composed of about 50% of the population earning 13,000 to 39,000 dollars a year (Hughes and Jenkins). Some also divide this class into a working class and a

The concept of social class has been around for ages and is still a part of today’s society. Social class is not only based on the individual’s wealth but also on their social standing such as; monarchs, priests, nobles, merchants, and peasant class. The peasant class was practically ignored, which means that the higher classes would only pay attention to each other. This can be the case in society today, there are some people who feel that their career makes them higher than a janitor. Even though humans have been around for centuries, social class is still a big issue.

Income and wealth distribution: comparing the differences in levels of income and wealth between different social groups help measure inequalities in society. The income is a regular flow of money earned by someone working or from someone’s benefits, pension or their savings. Wealth is defined on property, shares or other belongings that could be sold to make an income. This is very hard to measure accurately and to

This reveals that a relatively small proportion of households have high net worth and a large portion of households have low net worth, concluding with the simple statement that: The distribution of wealth is more unequal in Australia than the distribution of income.

Money has become the lethal weapon that controls everything in society, it is an essential need in order to survive. Without money one simply cannot provide for their basic needs such as food, housing, clothing etc. As the value of money increases in the country it creates a heavy burden on the lower class. In terms of wealth in the United States we have the lower class (bottom twenty percent), the middle class (second twenty percent, middle twenty percent), and the upper class (fourth twenty percent, top twenty percent). As time passes by, the gap between the top twenty percent and the bottom twenty percent rapidly increases, leaving a dramatic gap between the two. The question that comes to thought is, is the distribution of wealth in the

Wealth inequality is a controversial topic because money distribution in America doesn’t ‘seem right. The upper class possess most of the wealth in America and the bottom don’t nearly get as much.

Income Inequality is a tough policy issue to tackle and relate to the texts the class has been assigned to read. This particular policy issue is rather difficult to give insight on because income inequality is widespread and immense, yet most of Washington and mainstream America will not address this critical matter in question that is happening all over the country. Beliefs are blinding the majority of America when it comes to how money is distributed throughout the social classes and minorities in this nation. Americans have a distorted view of how unequal the pay gap is between the top 20% and the bottom 40%, according to Nicholas Fitz (2015). For instance, in the first study done by Michael Dorton and Dan Ariely, 5,000 Americans guessed that the richest 20% own 59% of the wealth and the bottom 40% own 9% of the wealth (Fitz. 2015). Consequently, the actual statistics are that the top 20% own more than 84% of the wealth, whereas the bottom 40% own a scarce amount of the wealth of 0.3% (Fitz.2015). Elitist view of power, also, is another term that relates to this issue of income inequality due to how government in this country, with regards to how only a few people with power actually know economically, what is happening in America, leaving the majority of American citizens in the dark about how money flows and how discrimination of minorities is hindering their ability to earn livable wages (Fitz.2015). The Federal Poverty Level which is based on the amount of income

Social class variations in U.S. family life starts with categories of people who share a common economic position in the unequal society in which they live in (Strong and Cohen 82). Classes indicate economic indicators such as wealth and income earned. These show what people have such as bank accounts, houses, stocks, and retirement plans, but eliminates their debt such as credit cards, loans, and mortgages. Social class is known to have structural and cultural dimensions. Structurally, social class shows our occupations that we depend on for earnings, the power it presents us with, and the opportunities we get to experience. Culturally, social class follows people’s beliefs, attitudes, values, and motivations that separate them from other classes. People are grouped together in classes because of their similar incomes, amounts of wealth, degrees of occupation status, and years of education. Social class is experienced differently by people throughout life.

As we know, the first thing to distinct a person’s class is his or her income. As Reeve’s observed, he found that the three different classes inside the middle class, upper class, middle “half”, and bottom “half”. He said that according to the recent research, “incomes in the upper middle class are rising relative to the rest of the distribution” (Reeve, 2015). The Great Recession that happened during 2007 to 2009 brought plenty of families down and almost destroyed them, people said the middle class was affected the most. However, not many people know that there are classes in side a class; the upper middle class revered from the Great Recession pretty soon and kept increasing their wealth while the rest of the middle

Next, I will explain the characteristics of the middle class while differentiating between the upper-middle class and lower-middle class. The main concept of the middle class is comfort. All of the middle class work hard to pursue and maintain that level of comfort in their lives. However, the middle class is separated into sections, the upper-middle class and lower-middle class, based upon different aspects on what people consider to be middle class. With the upper-middle class, they tend to have degrees in fields such as business, law, and medicine (Keirns, et al., 2015). They tend to stay towards jobs that will guarantee them a stable income in order to reinforce the concept of comfort that was mentioned before. They have nice homes and cars, and their children are

British society is split into hierarchical categories with “higher” “middle” and “lower working” class. The British class structure is shaped like a pyramid cut into three

This essay will be discussing the extent to which social class and poverty affects health and illness. Firstly, what is social class? Each person’s perception of social class can be different; is social class defined by a person’s accent, the area they live in, or something as simple as their income? Project Britain describes social class as “The grouping of people by occupations and lifestyle”. (Cress, 2014). To find social class Sociologists group people according to common factors, they compare people and various criteria can be conveniently used to place people in social groups or classes. Next we ask the question what determines a person’s health, the NHS defines health as “Physical and mental, it is the absence of disease”. (NHS 2017).

Social class is earned but not always completely. There are people who work very hard and have rightfully earned their wealth. However, there are others who had wealth passed down to them. Working hard and being born into wealth is not the same thing. Not every hard working individual receives the money they deserve. Many people work

The social classes are based on numerical measures of income and wealth. However, other social factors such as level of education and individual social status are considered. Due to differentiation of incomes, wealth and social status, a society is stratified at a continuous rate with no clear class boundaries. As a result, individuals of one class may have different wealth accumulation or occupations (Beeghley, 2004). In addition, individuals having similar occupation positions may also have different lifestyles and end up forming a social class.