social class essay

We use cookies to enhance our website for you. Proceed if you agree to this policy or learn more about it.

• Essay Database >
• Essay Examples >
• Essays Topics >
• Essay on Sociology

Social Classes Essay Example

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Sociology , Social Class , Countries , Wealth , Theory , Society , Money , Education

Words: 1700

Published: 02/11/2020

ORDER PAPER LIKE THIS

Introduction

Social class is an age old concept referring to a group of people with similar status, power, influence and wealth. Social class refers to the social stratification of the society based on social, economic and educational status. However, the definition of class is not uniform across the countries and societies. There exist different theories of social class division and its impact on us. The word 'class' derives from the Latin word “classis”. During census people were categorized into different “classis” based on their wealth in ancient Rome. Wealth is still the biggest factor in determining class strata. This essay will highlight different theories of social class and different social factors that differentiate social classes, subsequently touching upon the probable social challenges encountered by someone while moving from one social ladder to another.

Social Class: Theories

Social class models are based on economics, sociology and psychology. Historically the most popular model is the common stratum model that divides society into three simple hierarchy of upper class, middle class and lower or working class. According to this theory, society is divided into different classes based on mainly two factors, economic and social. Apart from the common stratum model, there exists a Marxian class theory proposed by Karl Marx. Marx believed that class is a combination of subjective and objective factors. Objectively, a class shares a common relationship in terms of output. Subjectively, members of a class believe that they share some common interests. This class perception is not only a common feeling of shared interest of one’s own class but it also indicates how the society should be. As per the class theory of Marx, two classes - bourgeoisie and proletariat constitute the major two strata of the social class. Bourgeoisies are the wealthy section of a society controlling power through money. Proletariats are laborers who depend on bourgeoisies to earn money by selling labor. Marx explained in his theory about how ultimately bourgeoisies would be eliminated from the society and all would turn equal. Marx envisions a classless society in which there will be no class, no state and no need for money and everything will be shared and the society will run based on needs and not based on profits. Max Weber was a 19th century German philosopher and sociologist who presented another class theory. Weber’s theory is known as ‘Three component theory of stratification’. According to Weber, society is not stratified on the basis of economic status alone; it is also dependent on status and power. In Weber’s definition class or economic position definitely creates social strata but it is not the only factor. Status is another factor creating divide in the society. For Example, poets or saints may not be rich but they enjoy very high status or social class in the society. Power is another factor dividing society into different classes. For example, a person working in FBI may not be affluent monetary wise but he has immense power giving him a higher status in the society.

Modern Day Class Strata

In modern day world, social class stratification is based on the common three stratum model. This model divides the society into three strata - the upper class, middle class and lower class. Upper class is composed of people who are born wealthy or who are wealthy through inheritance or both. In most of the countries the upper class is determined by wealth. For example, in underdeveloped countries and developing countries like India, China, Kenya, Egypt and others a financially wealthy person always belongs to the upper class. The same is applicable in most of the developed countries as well. However, in some countries only people born into high society or aristocratic bloodlines are deemed as members of the upper class. Those who have amassed wealth through business or commercial activity are viewed as nouveau riche (New Charter University). This is particularly apparent in Britain where the concept of royal family and royal blood decides the upper or royal class. The third kinds of people considered to be upper class are politicians. In most of the countries, politicians are vested with huge power which gives them a social status one notch above the rest. Middle Class is the most dynamic among all class definitions. The definition of this class category changes with changing society and changing time. The common definition is that middle class are those people working on behalf of the owners to control and manage the laborers and they also work in highly skilled areas. Middle class definition of US is very broad and includes people who in many other societies will be considered lower class. The middle class concept in developed societies is broadening as more and more labor intensive work is now being outsourced to developing countries with only high end works being retained in developed countries. Middle class population is educated and highly skilled and in most of the cases earns enough money to live a decent life with secure future. Depending on the annual income bracket ranging from $50,000 to $199,999, American middle class is segmented into upper and lower middle class with upper middle class potentially earning between the range of $150,000 to $199,000 and lower middle class earning within the range of $50,000 to $74,999 (New Charter University). Upper middle class people are usually graduates with professional degrees practicing professions like law, banking, corporate sector, finance, engineering and other occupations. Lower middle class people are also highly educated involved in white-collar professions of teaching, nursing and the like. Lower class also known as the working class are the people working in blue-collar low paying jobs in factories, construction sites, restaurants and clerical positions. They have little or no economic security as they always live in the fear of losing their jobs. They don't have adequate technological expertise like the middle class to work in better paying jobs.

Changing Social Class: Challenges

All of us are born into some social strata of the society and cultural setting. Based on the class we receive education, healthcare, community and religious influences. This brings in some common behavioral pattern inside us knowingly or unknowingly. Most of us are born and die in the same social class (AAAS). People born in lower class have every possibility that they will also die poor. People born in the upper or middle classes are most likely to die as same. Only an individual or a group of individuals can move up the social ladder through massive individual or social initiative. As we have seen in the previous section that the main difference between a lower class person and an upper class person is the special skill and knowledge. This can be achieved through better education. Lower class people cannot move into the middle class strata of the society because for better education often money is required which they do not have. This barrier can be minimized by making education more affordable to lower class. We have seen more people moving into middle class where the basic education is same for all and is affordable by all. The US is one of the great examples of a society which has decreased its lower class by making basic education available to all. Moving into upper class from middle class is not that easy. The main difference between a upper class and middle class person is money. The main three things determining the upper class are wealth, high born and power. Middle class people cannot be high born and hence in order to acquire the status of upper class they have to either attain power or money. Power can be achieved by getting into positions of importance like Member of Parliament or minister of local, state or central government. Money can be achieved by getting into business ventures. On the other hand, getting down to the bottom of the social ladder seems to be an easier process. Upper class people who are born amidst wealth and power may lose all of it if they maintain an extravagant lifestyle and make injudicious investments.

Social class is an old concept that determines the social stratification existing in a society on the basis of economic position, social status and educational qualification. There are different theories of social class like common stratum model, Marxian class theory and Weber's three component theory of stratification. In today's world social class stratification relies on the common three stratum model which divides society into three distinct sections - upper class, middle class and lower class. Usually, based on the social setting and the availability of resources for learning skill and education, people born into each specific class die the same as they were born into. But since the difference between a middle class and lower class is the difference in education and skill, if education can be made affordable to all then chances of lower class people going one notch up the social ladder to middle class position are higher, but the same is not true for people aspiring to reach the upper class position because then they have to earn enough money and power to earn high status. Compared to difficulty in social climb, it is lot easier for one to climb down the social strata. A rich person can turn poor if he does no work and wastes money making bad investments.

Works Cited

Marx's Theory of Social Class and Class Structure, 28 Sept. 1999. Web. 14 July 2013 <http://uregina.ca/~gingrich/s28f99.htm> Shortell, Prof. Timothy. Weber's Theory of Social Class, Department of Sociology, Brooklyn College, Web. 14 July 2013 <http://www.brooklynsoc.org/courses/43.1/weber.html> Social Class in the United States, New Charter University, Web. 14 July 2013 <https://new.edu/resources/social-class-in-the-united-states> Social Class, Social Change, and Poverty, AAAS. Web. 14 July 2013 <http://sciencenetlinks.com/lessons/social-class-social-change-and-poverty/> Lareau, Annette and Conley, Dalton. Social Class: How Does It Work?, Russell Sage Foundation (August 2008). Print. Argyle, Michael. The Psychology of Social Class, Routledge: 1 edition (January 27, 1994). Print. Weber's View of Stratification, Boundless. Web. 14 July 2013 <https://www.boundless.com/sociology/understanding-global-stratification-and-inequality/sociological-theories-and-global-inequality/weber-s-view-of-stratification/>

Cite this page

Share with friends using:

Removal Request

Finished papers: 2837

This paper is created by writer with

ID 285254961

If you want your paper to be:

Well-researched, fact-checked, and accurate

Original, fresh, based on current data

Eloquently written and immaculately formatted

275 words = 1 page double-spaced

Get your papers done by pros!

Other Pages

Approach essays, legal drinking age essays, different styles essays, obese essays, scarce resources essays, war ii essays, the play essays, harsh essays, psychosocial essays, effective leadership essays, music theory essays, essay on after school delinquency prevention program, free research paper on follow up compliance with pre arranged primary care providers post emergency room, health care essay sample, cyber bullying essay, republican and liberal democratic positions essay sample, low back pain cost of illness essay sample, code of ethics for physical therapists without the use of drugs essay, report on internal briefing paper, research paper on procedures in the physical sciences, powers of congress essay, sample essay on receiving feedback, culturally responsive teachers in todays diverse classroom essay samples, example of objectives report, literary analysis assignment essay example, good chinese immigration to the united states of america research paper example, free report about comparison between social identity and realistic conflict theories, hand washing and bacteria report sample, example of the andrea yates case essay, free literature review on differential effects of egfr ligands on endocytic, external analysis of hd motorcycle manufacturer case study sample, good example of mathematics paper report, example of interactive advertisin campaign course work, essay on e business, free art architecture research paper example, art in the middle east research papers example, invasion of privacy case studies, public debt case studies, fatality case studies, timeliness case studies, cruise ship case studies, incapacity case studies, tracheostomy case studies.

Password recovery email has been sent to [email protected]

Use your new password to log in

You are not register!

By clicking Register, you agree to our Terms of Service and that you have read our Privacy Policy .

Now you can download documents directly to your device!

Check your email! An email with your password has already been sent to you! Now you can download documents directly to your device.

or Use the QR code to Save this Paper to Your Phone

The sample is NOT original!

Short on a deadline?

Don't waste time. Get help with 11% off using code - GETWOWED

No, thanks! I'm fine with missing my deadline

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

8.3 Social Class in the United States

Learning objectives.

• Distinguish objective and subjective measures of social class.
• Outline the functionalist view of the American class structure.
• Outline the conflict view of the American class structure.
• Discuss whether the United States has much vertical social mobility.

There is a surprising amount of disagreement among sociologists on the number of social classes in the United States and even on how to measure social class membership. We first look at the measurement issue and then discuss the number and types of classes sociologists have delineated.

Measuring Social Class

We can measure social class either objectively or subjectively . If we choose the objective method, we classify people according to one or more criteria, such as their occupation, education, and/or income. The researcher is the one who decides which social class people are in based on where they stand in regard to these variables. If we choose the subjective method, we ask people what class they think they are in. For example, the General Social Survey asks, “If you were asked to use one of four names for your social class, which would you say you belong in: the lower class, the working class, the middle class, or the upper class?” Figure 8.3 “Subjective Social Class Membership” depicts responses to this question. The trouble with such a subjective measure is that some people say they are in a social class that differs from what objective criteria might indicate they are in. This problem leads most sociologists to favor objective measures of social class when they study stratification in American society.

Figure 8.3 Subjective Social Class Membership

Source: Data from General Social Survey, 2008.

Yet even here there is disagreement between functionalist theorists and conflict theorists on which objective measures to use. Functionalist sociologists rely on measures of socioeconomic status (SES) , such as education, income, and occupation, to determine someone’s social class. Sometimes one of these three variables is used by itself to measure social class, and sometimes two or all three of the variables are combined (in ways that need not concern us) to measure social class. When occupation is used, sociologists often rely on standard measures of occupational prestige. Since the late 1940s, national surveys have asked Americans to rate the prestige of dozens of occupations, and their ratings are averaged together to yield prestige scores for the occupations (Hodge, Siegel, & Rossi, 1964). Over the years these scores have been relatively stable. Here are some average prestige scores for various occupations: physician, 86; college professor, 74; elementary school teacher, 64; letter carrier, 47; garbage collector, 28; and janitor, 22.

Despite SES’s usefulness, conflict sociologists prefer different, though still objective, measures of social class that take into account ownership of the means of production and other dynamics of the workplace. These measures are closer to what Marx meant by the concept of class throughout his work, and they take into account the many types of occupations and workplace structures that he could not have envisioned when he was writing during the 19th century.

For example, corporations have many upper-level managers who do not own the means of production but still determine the activities of workers under them. They thus do not fit neatly into either of Marx’s two major classes, the bourgeoisie or the proletariat. Recognizing these problems, conflict sociologists delineate social class on the basis of several factors, including the ownership of the means of production, the degree of autonomy workers enjoy in their jobs, and whether they supervise other workers or are supervised themselves (Wright, 2000).

The American Class Structure

As should be evident, it is not easy to determine how many social classes exist in the United States. Over the decades, sociologists have outlined as many as six or seven social classes based on such things as, once again, education, occupation, and income, but also on lifestyle, the schools people’s children attend, a family’s reputation in the community, how “old” or “new” people’s wealth is, and so forth (Coleman & Rainwater, 1978; Warner & Lunt, 1941). For the sake of clarity, we will limit ourselves to the four social classes included in Figure 8.3 “Subjective Social Class Membership” : the upper class, the middle class, the working class, and the lower class. Although subcategories exist within some of these broad categories, they still capture the most important differences in the American class structure (Gilbert, 2011). The annual income categories listed for each class are admittedly somewhat arbitrary but are based on the percentage of households above or below a specific income level.

The Upper Class

Depending on how it is defined, the upper class consists of about 4% of the U.S. population and includes households with annual incomes (2009 data) of more than $200,000 (DeNavas-Walt, Proctor, & Smith, 2010). Some scholars would raise the ante further by limiting the upper class to households with incomes of at least $500,000 or so, which in turn reduces this class to about 1% of the population, with an average wealth (income, stocks and bonds, and real estate) of several million dollars. However it is defined, the upper class has much wealth, power, and influence (Kerbo, 2009).

The upper class in the United States consists of about 4% of all households and possesses much wealth, power, and influence.

Steven Martin – Highland Park Mansion – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Members of the upper-upper class have “old” money that has been in their families for generations; some boast of their ancestors coming over on the Mayflower . They belong to exclusive clubs and live in exclusive neighborhoods; have their names in the Social Register ; send their children to expensive private schools; serve on the boards of museums, corporations, and major charities; and exert much influence on the political process and other areas of life from behind the scenes. Members of the lower-upper class have “new” money acquired through hard work, lucky investments, and/or athletic prowess. In many ways their lives are similar to those of their old-money counterparts, but they do not enjoy the prestige that old money brings. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft and the richest person in the United States in 2009, would be considered a member of the lower-upper class because his money is too “new.” Because he does not have a long-standing pedigree, upper-upper class members might even be tempted to disparage his immense wealth, at least in private.

The Middle Class

Many of us like to think of ourselves in the middle class, as Figure 8.3 “Subjective Social Class Membership” showed, and many of us are. The middle class includes the 46% of all households whose annual incomes range from $50,000 to $199,999. As this very broad range suggests, the middle class includes people with many different levels of education and income and many different types of jobs. It is thus helpful to distinguish the upper-middle class from the lower-middle class on the upper and lower ends of this income bracket, respectively. The upper-middle class has household incomes from about $150,000 to $199,000, amounting to about 4.4% of all households. People in the upper-middle class typically have college and, very often, graduate or professional degrees; live in the suburbs or in fairly expensive urban areas; and are bankers, lawyers, engineers, corporate managers, and financial advisers, among other occupations.

The upper-middle class in the United States consists of about 4.4% of all households, with incomes ranging from $150,000 to $199,000.

Alyson Hurt – Back Porch – CC BY-NC 2.0.

The lower-middle class has household incomes from about $50,000 to $74,999, amounting to about 18% of all families. People in this income bracket typically work in white-collar jobs as nurses, teachers, and the like. Many have college degrees, usually from the less prestigious colleges, but many also have 2-year degrees or only a high school degree. They live somewhat comfortable lives but can hardly afford to go on expensive vacations or buy expensive cars and can send their children to expensive colleges only if they receive significant financial aid.

The Working Class

The working class in the United States consists of about 25% of all households, whose members work in blue-collar jobs and less skilled clerical positions.

Lisa Risager – Ebeltoft – CC BY-SA 2.0.

Working-class households have annual incomes between about $25,000 and $49,999 and constitute about 25% of all U.S. households. They generally work in blue-collar jobs such as factory work, construction, restaurant serving, and less skilled clerical positions. People in the working class typically do not have 4-year college degrees, and some do not have high school degrees. Although most are not living in official poverty, their financial situation is very uncomfortable. A single large medical bill or expensive car repair would be almost impossible to pay without going into considerable debt. Working-class families are far less likely than their wealthier counterparts to own their own homes or to send their children to college. Many of them live at risk for unemployment as their companies downsize by laying off workers even in good times, and hundreds of thousands began to be laid off when the U.S. recession began in 2008.

The Lower Class

The lower class or poor in the United States constitute about 25% of all households. Many poor individuals lack high school degrees and are unemployed or employed only part time.

Chris Hunkeler – Trailer Homes – CC BY-SA 2.0.

Although lower class is a common term, many observers prefer a less negative-sounding term like the poor, which is the term used here. The poor have household incomes under $25,000 and constitute about 25% of all U.S. households. Many of the poor lack high school degrees, and many are unemployed or employed only part time in semiskilled or unskilled jobs. When they do work, they work as janitors, house cleaners, migrant laborers, and shoe shiners. They tend to rent apartments rather than own their own homes, lack medical insurance, and have inadequate diets. We will discuss the poor further when we focus later in this chapter on inequality and poverty in the United States.

Social Mobility

Regardless of how we measure and define social class, what are our chances of moving up or down within the American class structure? As we saw earlier, the degree of vertical social mobility is a key distinguishing feature of systems of stratification. Class systems such as in the United States are thought to be open, meaning that social mobility is relatively high. It is important, then, to determine how much social mobility exists in the United States.

Here we need to distinguish between two types of vertical social mobility. Intergenerational mobility refers to mobility from one generation to the next within the same family. If children from poor parents end up in high-paying jobs, the children have experienced upward intergenerational mobility. Conversely, if children of college professors end up hauling trash for a living, these children have experienced downward intergenerational mobility. Intragenerational mobility refers to mobility within a person’s own lifetime. If you start out as an administrative assistant in a large corporation and end up as an upper-level manager, you have experienced upward intragenerational mobility. But if you start out from business school as an upper-level manager and get laid off 10 years later because of corporate downsizing, you have experienced downward intragenerational mobility.

Sociologists have conducted a good deal of research on vertical mobility, much of it involving the movement of males up or down the occupational prestige ladder compared to their fathers, with the earliest studies beginning in the 1960s (Blau & Duncan, 1967; Featherman & Hauser, 1978). For better or worse, the focus on males occurred because the initial research occurred when many women were still homemakers and also because women back then were excluded from many studies in the social and biological sciences. The early research on males found that about half of sons end up in higher-prestige jobs than their fathers had but that the difference between the sons’ jobs and their fathers’ was relatively small. For example, a child of a janitor may end up running a hardware store but is very unlikely to end up as a corporate executive. To reach that lofty position, it helps greatly to have parents in jobs much more prestigious than a janitor’s. Contemporary research also finds much less mobility among African Americans and Latinos than among non-Latino whites with the same education and family backgrounds, suggesting an important negative impact of racial and ethnic discrimination (see Chapter 7 “Deviance, Crime, and Social Control” ).

A college education is a key step toward achieving upward social mobility. However, the payoff of education is often higher for men than for women and for whites than for people of color.

Nazareth College – Commencement 2013 – CC BY 2.0.

A key vehicle for upward mobility is formal education. Regardless of the socioeconomic status of our parents, we are much more likely to end up in a high-paying job if we attain a college degree or, increasingly, a graduate or professional degree. Figure 8.4 “Education and Median Earnings of Year-Round, Full-Time Workers, 2007” vividly shows the difference that education makes for Americans’ median annual incomes. Notice, however, that for a given level of education, men’s incomes are greater than women’s. Figure 8.4 “Education and Median Earnings of Year-Round, Full-Time Workers, 2007” thus suggests that the payoff of education is higher for men than for women, and many studies support this conclusion (Green & Ferber, 2008). The reasons for this gender difference are complex and will be discussed further in Chapter 11 “Gender and Gender Inequality” . To the extent vertical social mobility exists in the United States, then, it is higher for men than for women and higher for whites than for people of color.

Figure 8.4 Education and Median Earnings of Year-Round, Full-Time Workers, 2007

Source: Data from U.S. Census Bureau. (2010). Statistical abstract of the United States: 2010 . Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab .

Certainly the United States has upward social mobility, even when we take into account gender and racial discrimination. Whether we conclude the United States has a lot of vertical mobility or just a little is the key question, and the answer to this question depends on how the data are interpreted. People can and do move up the socioeconomic ladder, but their movement is fairly limited. Hardly anyone starts at the bottom of the ladder and ends up at the top. As we see later in this chapter, recent trends in the U.S. economy have made it more difficult to move up the ladder and have even worsened the status of some people.

One way of understanding the issue of U.S. mobility is to see how much parents’ education affects the education their children attain. Figure 8.5 “Parents’ Education and Percentage of Respondents Who Have a College Degree” compares how General Social Survey respondents with parents of different educational backgrounds fare in attaining a college (bachelor’s) degree. For the sake of clarity, the figure includes only those respondents whose parents had the same level of education as each other: they either both dropped out of high school, both were high school graduates, or both were college graduates.

Figure 8.5 Parents’ Education and Percentage of Respondents Who Have a College Degree

As Figure 8.5 “Parents’ Education and Percentage of Respondents Who Have a College Degree” indicates, we are much more likely to get a college degree if our parents had college degrees themselves. The two bars for respondents whose parents were high school graduates or dropouts, respectively, do represent upward mobility, because the respondents are graduating from college even though their parents did not. But the three bars taken together also show that our chances of going to college depend heavily on our parents’ education (and presumably their income and other aspects of our family backgrounds). The American Dream does exist, but it is much more likely to remain only a dream unless we come from advantaged backgrounds. In fact, there is less vertical mobility in the United States than in other Western democracies. As a recent analysis summarized the evidence, “There is considerably more mobility in most of the other developed economies of Europe and Scandinavia than in the United States” (Mishel, Bernstein, & Shierholz, 2009, p. 108).

Key Takeaways

• Several ways of measuring social class exist. Functionalist and conflict sociologists disagree on which objective criteria to use in measuring social class. Subjective measures of social class, which rely on people rating their own social class, may lack some validity.
• Sociologists disagree on the number of social classes in the United States, but a common view is that the United States has four classes: upper, middle, working, and lower. Further variations exist within the upper and middle classes.
• The United States has some vertical social mobility, but not as much as several nations in Western Europe.

For Your Review

• Which way of measuring social class do you prefer, objective or subjective? Explain your answer.
• Which objective measurement of social class do you prefer, functionalist or conflict? Explain your answer.

Blau, P. M., & Duncan, O. D. (1967). The American occupational structure . New York, NY: Wiley.

Coleman, R. P., & Rainwater, L. (1978). Social standing in America . New York, NY: Basic Books.

DeNavas-Walt, C., Proctor, B. D., & Smith, J. C. (2010). Income, poverty, and health insurance coverage in the United States: 2009 (Current Population Report P60-238). Washington, DC: U.S. Census Bureau.

Featherman, D. L., & Hauser, R. M. (1978). Opportunity and change . New York, NY: Academic Press.

Gilbert, D. (2011). The American class structure in an age of growing inequality (8th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.

Green, C. A., & Ferber, M. A. (2008). The long-term impact of labor market interruptions: How crucial is timing? Review of Social Economy, 66 , 351–379.

Hodge, R. W., Siegel, P., & Rossi, P. (1964). Occupational prestige in the United States, 1925–63. American Journal of Sociology, 70 , 286–302.

Kerbo, H. R. (2009). Social stratification and inequality . New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Mishel, L., Bernstein, J., & Shierholz, H. (2009). The state of working America 2008/2009 . Ithaca, NY: ILR Press [An imprint of Cornell University Press].

Warner, W. L., & Lunt, P. S. (1941). The social life of a modern community . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Wright, E. O. (2000). Class counts: Comparative studies in class analysis . New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Sociology Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

What Is Social Class, and Why Does it Matter?

How Sociologists Define and Study the Concept

smartboy10 / Getty Images

• Key Concepts
• Major Sociologists
• News & Issues
• Research, Samples, and Statistics
• Recommended Reading
• Archaeology
• Ph.D., Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara
• M.A., Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara
• B.A., Sociology, Pomona College

Class, economic class, socio-economic class, social class. What's the difference? Each refers to how people are sorted into groups—specifically ranked hierarchies —in society. There are, in fact, important differences among them.

Economic Class

Economic class refers specifically to how one ranks relative to others in terms of income and wealth. Simply put, we are sorted into groups by how much money we have. These groups are commonly understood as lower (the poorest), middle, and upper class (the richest). When someone uses the word "class" to refer to how people are stratified in society, they are most often referring to this.

The model of economic class we use today is a derivation of German philosopher Karl Marx 's (1818–1883) definition of class, which was central to his theory of how society operates in a state of class conflict. In that state, an individual's power comes directly from one's economic class position relative to the means of production—one is either an owner of capitalist entities or a worker for one of the owners. Marx and fellow philosopher Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) presented this idea in " The Manifesto of the Communist Party ," and Marx expounded in much greater length in volume one of his work called "Capital."

Socio-Economic Class

Socio-economic class, also known as socioeconomic status  and often abbreviated as SES, refers to how other factors, namely occupation and education, are combined with wealth and income to rank a person relative to others in society. This model is inspired by the theories of German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920), who viewed the stratification of society as a result of the combined influences of economic class, social status (the level of a person's prestige or honor relative to others), and group power (what he called "party"). Weber defined "party" as the level of one's ability to get what they want, despite how others may fight them on it. Weber wrote about this in an essay titled "The distribution of power within the political community: Class, status, party," in his 1922 book "Economy and Society," published after his death.

Socio-economic class is a more complex formulation than economic class because it takes into account the social status attached to certain professions considered prestigious, like doctors and professors, for example, and to educational attainment as measured in academic degrees. It also takes into account the lack of prestige or even stigma that may be associated with other professions, like blue-collar jobs or the service sector, and the stigma often associated with not finishing high school. Sociologists typically create data models that draw on ways of measuring and ranking these different factors to arrive at a low, middle, or high SES for a given person.

Social Class

The term "social class" is often used interchangeably with SES, both by the general public and by sociologists alike. Very often when you hear it used, that is what it means. In a technical sense, however, social class is used to refer specifically to the characteristics that are less likely to change, or harder to change, than one's economic status, which is potentially changeable over time. In such a case, social class refers to the socio-cultural aspects of one's life, namely the traits, behaviors, knowledge, and lifestyle that one is socialized into by one's family. This is why class descriptors like "lower," "working," "upper," or "high" can have social as well as economic implications for how we understand the person described.

When someone uses "classy" as a descriptor, they are naming certain behaviors and lifestyle and framing them as superior to others. In this sense, social class is determined strongly by one's level of cultural capital , a concept developed by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002) in his 1979 work "Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste." Bourdieu said that levels of class are determined by the attainment of a specific set of knowledge, behaviors, and skills that allow a person to navigate in society.

Why Does It Matter?

So why does class, however you want to name it or slice it, matter? It matters to sociologists because the fact that it exists reflects unequal access to rights, resources, and power in society—what we call social stratification . As such, it has a strong effect on the access an individual has to education, the quality of that education, and how high a level he or she can reach. It also affects who one knows socially, and the extent to which those people can provide advantageous economic and employment opportunities, political participation and power, and even health and life expectancy, among many other things.

Sources and Further Reading

• Cookson Jr., Peter W. and Caroline Hodges Persell. "Preparing for Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools." New York: Basic Books, 1985.
• Marx, Karl. " Capital: A Critique of Political Economy ." Trans. Moore, Samuel, Edward Aveling and Friedrich Engels. Marxists.org, 2015 (1867).
• Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. " The Communist Manifesto ." Trans. Moore, Samuel and Friedrich Engels. Marxists.org, 2000 (1848).
• Weber, Max. "Economy and Society." ed. Roth, Guenther and Claus Wittich. Oakland: University of California Press, 2013 (1922).
• Theories of Ideology
• Power Definitions and Examples in Sociology
• Understanding Alienation and Social Alienation
• Visualizing Social Stratification in the U.S.
• Rational Choice Theory
• Definition of a Formal Organization
• Pilot Study in Research
• All About Relative Deprivation and Deprivation Theory
• Feminist Theory in Sociology
• An Introduction to Socioeconomic Status
• What Is Social Oppression?
• How Expectation States Theory Explains Social Inequality
• Understanding Conflict Theory
• Definition of Cultural Relativism in Sociology
• Understanding Max Weber's 'Iron Cage'
• Definition of Base and Superstructure

5.1 The Impacts of Social Class

In the United States, a person’s social class has far-reaching consequences. Social class refers to the the grouping of individuals in a stratified hierarchy based on wealth, income, education, occupation, and social network (though other factors are sometimes considered) (“Hierarchy,” 2019). One’s position in the social class hierarchy may impact, for example, health, family life, education, religious affiliation, political participation, and experience with the criminal justice system.

Social class in the United States is a controversial issue, with social scientists disagreeing over models, definitions, and even the basic question of whether or not distinct classes exist. Many Americans believe in a simple threeclass model that includes the rich or upper class, the middle class, and the poor or working class (“Social Class,” 2020). More complex models that have been proposed by social scientists describe as many as a dozen class levels. Regardless of which model of social classes used, it is clear that socioeconomic status (SES) is tied to particular opportunities and resources. Socioeconomic status refers to a person’s position in the social hierarchy and is determined by their income, wealth, occupational prestige, and educational attainment.

While social class may be an amorphous and diffuse concept, with scholars disagreeing over its definition, tangible advantages are associated with high socioeconomic status. People in the highest SES bracket, generally referred to as the upper class, likely have better access to healthcare, marry people of higher social status, attend more prestigious schools, and are more influential in politics than people in the middle class or working class. People in the upper class are members of elite social networks, effectively meaning that they have access to people in powerful positions who have specialized knowledge. These social networks confer benefits ranging from advantages in seeking education and employment to leniency by police and the courts. Sociologists may dispute exactly how to model the distinctions between socioeconomic statuses, but the higher up the class hierarchy one is in America, the better health, educational, and professional outcomes one is likely to have (“Social Class,” 2020).

Physical Health

A person’s social class has a significant impact on their physical health, their ability to receive adequate medical care and nutrition, and their life expectancy. While gender and race play significant roles in explaining healthcare inequality in the United States, SES is the greatest social determinant of an individual’s health outcome. Social determinants of health are the economic and social conditions that influence individual and group differences in health status. Social determinants are environmental, meaning that they are risk factors found in one’s living and working conditions (including the distribution of income, wealth, influence, and power), rather than individual factors (such as behavioral risk factors or genetics). Social determinants can be used to predict one’s risk of contracting a disease or sustaining an injury, and can also indicate how vulnerable one is to the consequences of a disease or injury (“Social Determinants of Health,” 2019). Individuals of lower socioeconomic status have lower levels of overall health, less insurance coverage, and less access to adequate healthcare than those of higher SES (Figure 5.1).

Individuals with a low SES in the United States experience a wide array of health problems as a result of their economic position (“Health Equity,” 2020). They are unable to use healthcare as often as people of higher status and when they do, it is often of lower quality. Additionally, people with low SES tend to experience a much higher rate of health issues than those of high SES (“Social Class,” 2020). Many social scientists hypothesize that the higher rate of illness among those with low SES can be attributed to environmental hazards. For example, poorer neighborhoods tend to have fewer grocery stores and more fast food chains than wealthier neighborhoods, increasing nutrition problems and the risk of conditions, such as heart disease (“Health Equity,” 2020). Similarly, poorer neighborhoods tend to have fewer recreational facilities and higher crime rates than wealthier ones, which decreases the feasibility of routine exercise.

In addition to having an increased level of illness, lower socioeconomic classes have lower levels of health insurance than the upper class. Much of this disparity can be explained by the tendency for middle and upper class people to work in professions that provide health insurance benefits to employees, while lower status occupations often do not provide benefits to employees. For many employees who do not have health insurance benefits through their job, the cost of insurance can be prohibitive. Without insurance, or with inadequate insurance, the cost of healthcare can be extremely high. Consequently, many uninsured or poorly insured individuals do not have access to preventative care or quality treatment. This group of people has higher rates of infant mortality, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and disabling physical injuries than are seen among the well insured (“Health Care in the United States,” 2020).

Health inequality refers to the unequal distribution of environmental health hazards and access to health services between demographic groups, including social classes. For example, poor and affluent urban communities in the United States are geographically close to each other and to hospitals. Still, the affluent communities are more likely to have access to fresh produce, recreational facilities for exercise, preventative healthcare programs, and routine medical visits. Consequently, affluent communities are likely to have better health outcomes than nearby impoverished ones. The role of socioeconomic status in determining access to healthcare results in heath inequality between the upper, middle, and lower or working classes, with the higher classes having more positive health outcomes (“Health Equity,” 2020).

Mental Health

Mental health describes a level of psychological well-being or the presence/absence of a mental disorder (“Mental Health,” 2018). From the perspective of “positive psychology” or “holism,” mental health may include an individual’s ability to enjoy life and to demonstrate psychological resilience when confronted with challenges. The World Health Organization defines mental health as “a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community” (“Mental Health,” 2020).

What counts as healthy enjoyment and resilience depends upon one’s class perspective. Members of different classes encounter different stressors—lower class people likely face more financial stress as it pertains to day-to-day sustenance and well-being, while upper class people might experience stress from the intense social pressures associated with elite circles. The evaluation of which mental states can be considered healthy and which require medical intervention also varies by class.

Mental health is a socially constructed and socially defined concept; different societies, groups, cultures, institutions, and professions have very different ways of conceptualizing its nature and causes, determining what is mentally healthy, and deciding what interventions are appropriate. Definitions of mental health depend on cultural understandings in addition to biological and neurological findings. Members of different social classes often hold different views on mental health. Similarly, different social classes have different levels of access to mental health interventions and to information about mental health. Thus, the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders varies widely by social class.

Family Life

Family life—marriage and childbearing patterns, household composition, and home stability—are strongly influenced by social class (“Introduction to Sociology/Family,” 2017). In the United States, the probability of a first marriage ending is substantially higher for couples with low socioeconomic statuses than for those in the middle or upper class. Research shows that the higher rates of divorce for individuals in lower social classes can often be attributed to the greater financial stress these couples face, though factors like class expectations can also play a role.

Globally, the birth rate in countries with large impoverished populations is much higher than in wealthier countries, indicating that income and wealth play a role in shaping family structures. Demographers have identified a direct relationship between average number of children per household and the economic development of a nation. Today, less developed countries struggle with overpopulation while many governments in developed countries are instituting policies to deal with low birth rates. In nations with high levels of fertility, upper class individuals tend to have more children than their lower class peers. In nations with low levels of fertility, upper class families exhibit even lower fertility than average (“Birth Rate,” 2020).

Social class has both a cause and an effect relationship with family composition (“Introduction to Sociology/ Family,” 2017). For example, single-parent households are likely to have a lower social class because they violate social norms. At the same time, single-parent families can contribute to financial and social instability. A single parent will often face higher costs (in the form of paid childcare), lower earnings (loss of the second parent’s income or loss of time spent at work), or both.

Education is a major component of social class, both directly and indirectly. Directly, individuals from higher social classes are more likely to have the means to attend more prestigious schools, and are therefore more likely to receive higher educations (“Social Class,” 2020). Indirectly, individuals who benefit from such higher education are more likely to land prestigious jobs, and in turn, higher salaries. Just as education and social class are closely intertwined, stratification in education contributes to stratification in social class.

Educational attainment refers to the level of schooling a person completes—for instance, high school, some college, college, or a graduate degree. Upper class individuals are likely to attend schools of higher quality and of greater prestige than those attended by their lower class counterparts (“Educational Attainment in the United States,” 2020). Because members of high social classes tend to be better educated and have higher incomes, they are able to offer greater educational advantages, such as private schooling, to their children as well (Figure 5.3). Upper-class parents are better able to send their children not only to exclusive private schools, but also to public state-funded schools. Such schools are likely to be of higher quality in affluent areas than in impoverished ones, since they are funded by property taxes within the school district. Wealthy areas will provide more property taxes as revenue, which leads to higher quality schools. Educational inequality is one factor that perpetuates the class divide across generations.

Such educational inequality is further reinforced by legacy student admission, the preference given by educational institutions to applicants who are related to alumni of that institution (“Legacy Preferences,” 2020). Germane to university and college admissions (particularly in the United States), this practice emerged after World War I, primarily in response to the resulting immigrant influx. Ivy League institutions admit roughly 10% to 30% of students from each incoming class based on this factor.

Social class, measured by socioeconomic status, is associated with individuals’ religious affiliations and practices. Religious affiliation has more to do with how religion is practiced rather than degree of religiosity (“Introduction to Sociology/Religion,” 2018). Members of lower classes tend to be affiliated with more fundamentalist religions and sect-like groups. Members of the middle class tend to belong to more formal churches. For example, American Presbyterians and Episcopalians (two highly formal Protestant denominations), tend to have above average socioeconomic statuses. Methodists and Lutherans (two moderately formal Protestant denominations) tend to have about average SES. Baptists and members of Protestant fundamentalist sects (which tend to be decentralized and informal) have below average SES (“Introduction to Sociology/Religion,” 2018). Variations in SES across denomination reveal a correlation between religious affiliation and social class.

Social class is not significantly correlated to religiosity, an index of how strongly religious a person is. Religiosity is measured by tracking frequency of church attendance, church group involvement, frequency of prayer, and other such markers of strength of religious practice. Members of each social class show a range of religiosity.

On the other hand, income, and therefore social class, is related to an individual’s denomination. When one looks at average income by religion, there are clear differences. The highest-earning religion on average is Judaism, with an average income of $72,000 in 2000. This is dramatically higher than average; the next highest-earning denomination is Unitarianism at $56,000. Jehovah’s Witness, Church of God, and Seventh Day Adventists are at the bottom of the income distribution, with $24,000, $26,000, and $31,000, respectively (“Introduction to Sociology/Religion,” 2018).

Religion is also linked with education. 72% of Unitarian and 67% of Hindu adherents are college graduates, while only 12% of Jehovah’s Witness and 15% of Church of God members graduated from college (“Introduction to Sociology/Religion,” 2018).

Social class impacts one’s level of political participation and political influence. Political participation refers to whether or not a person votes in elections, donates to campaigns, or attends public forums where decisions are made, such as town meetings or city council meetings, for example. Political influence refers to the extent to which one’s political participation achieves its desired results. For example, if one attends a public forum, is their opinion likely to be heard, or if they donate money, is a politician likely to support their desired policy?

Wealthy, well-educated Americans are more likely to vote and to donate money to politicians than lower class individuals (Figure 5.5). This trend means that middle and upper class individuals have greater political participation and greater political influence than those in lower positions. Additionally, higher status people are more likely to hold political positions than lower class people. An illustration of this is the presidential election between George W. Bush and John Kerry in 2004. Both had millions of dollars of accumulated wealth, and they had higher degrees from Harvard and Yale, respectively (“Introduction to Sociology/Politics,” 2017).

Those who vote as members of a social class can be said to be participating in identity politics. Identity politics is a phenomenon that arose first at the radical margins of liberal democratic societies in which human rights are recognized, and the term is not usually used to refer to dissident movements within single-party or authoritarian states. Some groups have combined identity politics and Marxist social class analysis and class consciousness. During the 1980s, the politics of identity became very prominent and was linked with new social movement activism (“Identity Politics,” 2020).

FIGURE 5.5 Percentage of voter turnout by educational attainment (2008 presidential election). Educational attainment, an indicator of social class, can predict one’s level of political participation. Those with high educational attainment are more likely to vote in elections than those with little education. (This work, Voter Turnout by Education 2008, is a derivative of Voter Turnout by Educational Attainment, 2008 US Presidential Election by Rcragun/Wikimedia Commons, which is used under CC BY 3.0. Voter Turnout by Education 2008 is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 by Judy Schmitt.)]

Crime and criminal justice.

Criminal justice is the system of practices and government institutions directed at upholding social control, deterring, and mitigating crime, or sanctioning those who violate laws with criminal penalties and rehabilitation efforts. The American criminal justice system consists of three main parts: (1) enforcement; (2) adjudication; and (3) corrections. These distinct agencies are the principal means of maintaining the rule of law within society (“Criminal Justice,” 2020).

The first contact an offender has with the criminal justice system is usually with law enforcement, most often the police who investigate a suspected violation and make an arrest. Next, the courts carry out adjudication or the legal processing of offenders to determine their guilt or innocence and sentencing. The courts serve as the venue where disputes are settled and justice is administered. Depending on the offense, either a judge or a jury determines whether the suspect violated the law and what their punitive sentence will be. If found guilty by the court, offenders are then turned over to correctional authorities. Correctional authorities may include prison wardens or social workers, depending on the type of offense (“Criminal Justice,” 2020).

Like all other aspects of criminal justice, the administration of punishment has taken many different forms throughout history. Early on, when civilizations lacked the resources necessary to construct and maintain prisons, exile and execution were the primary forms of punishment. Historically, shame punishments have also been used as forms of censure (“Criminal Justice,” 2020).

The most publicly visible form of punishment in the modern era is the prison. Prisons may serve as detention centers for prisoners after trial. Jails are used for containment of the accused before trial. Early prisons were used primarily to sequester criminals and little thought was given to living conditions within their walls. In America, the Quaker movement is commonly credited with establishing the idea that prisons should be used to reform criminals. This can also be seen as a critical moment in the debate regarding the purpose of punishment (“Criminal Justice,” 2020).

In the United States, criminal justice policy has been guided by the 1967 President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, which issued a ground-breaking report titled The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society. This report made more than 200 recommendations as part of a comprehensive approach toward crime prevention. Some of those recommendations found their way into the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968. The commission advocated a “systems” approach to criminal justice, with improved coordination among law enforcement, courts, and correctional agencies. The commission defined the criminal justice system as the means for society to “enforce the standards of conduct necessary to protect individuals and the community” (President’s Commission, 1967, p. 7).

Birth rate. (2020, January 29). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Birth_rate&oldid=938230085

Criminal justice. (2020, January 9). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Criminal_justice&oldid=934990442

Educational attainment in the United States. (2020, January 29). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States&oldid=938187143

Health care in the United States. (2020, February 9). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Health_care_in_the_United_States&oldid=939993144

Health equity. (2020, February 17). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Health_equity&oldid=941219790

Hierarchy. (2019, September 29). In Wiktionary. https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=hierarchy&oldid=54378944

Identity politics. (2020, February 17). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Identity_politics&oldid=941294253

Introduction to sociology/family. (2017, August 16). In Wikibooks. https://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Introduction_to_Sociology/Family&oldid=3269745

Introduction to sociology/politics. (2017, August 6). In Wikibooks. https://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Introduction_to_Sociology/Politics&oldid=3259674

Introduction to sociology/religion. (2018, July 14). In Wikibooks. https://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Introduction_to_Sociology/Religion&oldid=3442359

Social class. (2020, February 9). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Social_class&oldid=939931063#Consequences_of_class_position

Social determinants of health. (2019, December 14). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Social_determinants_of_health&oldid=930655316

Legacy preferences. (2020, February 17). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Legacy_preferences&oldid=941192697

Mental health. (2018, October 28). In Wiktionary. https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=mental_health&oldid=50594437

Mental health. (2020, February 10). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mental_health&oldid=940015217

President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice. (1967). The challenge of crime in a free society: A report. U.S.

Government Printing Office. https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/42.pdf

Lumencandela. (n.d.). The impacts of social class. In Boundless sociology. Lumen Learning. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-sociology/chapter/the-impacts-of-social-class/

(Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License)

CC LICENSED CONTENT, SHARED PREVIOUSLY

• Curation and Revision.  Provided by : Boundless.com.  License :  CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike

CC LICENSED CONTENT, SPECIFIC ATTRIBUTION

• Social class.  Provided by : Wikipedia.  Located at :  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_class#Consequences_of_class_position .  License :  CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• hierarchy.  Provided by : Wiktionary.  License :  CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• socioeconomic.  Provided by : Wiktionary.  License :  CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Social determinants of health.  Provided by : Wikipedia.  License :  CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Health and Social Class.  Provided by : Wikipedia.  License :  CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Social class.  Provided by : Wikipedia.  License :  CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Boundless.  Provided by : Boundless Learning.  License :  CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• SOJ Farmers Market | Flickr – Photo Sharing!.  Provided by : Flickr.  Located at :  https://www.flickr.com/photos/suecline/4631621009/lightbox/ .  License :  CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Health care in the United States.  Provided by : Wikipedia.  Located at :  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_States .  License :  Public Domain: No Known Copyright
• mental health.  Provided by : Wiktionary.  Located at :  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mental_health .  License :  CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Mental health.  Provided by : Wikipedia.  License :  CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• mental disorder.  Provided by : Wiktionary.  License :  CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Health care in the United States.  Provided by : Wikipedia.  License :  Public Domain: No Known Copyright
• Mental disorder.  Provided by : Wikipedia.  License :  Public Domain: No Known Copyright
• Introduction to Sociology/Family.  Provided by : Wikibooks.  License :  CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• birth rate.  Provided by : Wikipedia.  License :  CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• overpopulation.  Provided by : Wiktionary.  License :  CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• private school.  Provided by : Wiktionary.  License :  CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Legacy preferences.  Provided by : Wikipedia.  License :  CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• educational attainment.  Provided by : Wikipedia.  License :  CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• legacy student.  Provided by : Wiktionary.  License :  CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Educational attainment in the United States.  Provided by : Wikipedia.  License :  Public Domain: No Known Copyright
• Introduction to Sociology/Religion.  Provided by : Wikibooks.  License :  CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Identity politics.  Provided by : Wikipedia.  License :  CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Introduction to Sociology/Politics.  Provided by : Wikibooks.  License :  CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Criminal justice.  Provided by : Wikipedia.  License :  CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• adjudication.  Provided by : Wiktionary.  License :  CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• court.  Provided by : Wiktionary.  License :  CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• law enforcement.  Provided by : Wiktionary.  License :  CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• SFPD: AFTER ARREST, FINDS GUNS & DRUGS | Flickr – Photo Sharing!.  Provided by : Flickr.  Located at :  https://www.flickr.com/photos/mybrightworld/6874142090/ .  License :  CC BY: Attribution
• Dred Scott Courtroom | Flickr – Photo Sharing!.  Provided by : Flickr.  License :  CC BY: Attribution

“The Impacts of Social Class” by Dr. Kathryn Weinland is adapted from “ The Impacts of Social Class ” curated by Boundless.com, licensed CC BY-SA except where otherwise noted.

Updated attribution and licensing edit by Kathy Essmiller, 3.16.23. Contact [email protected] if corrections are needed or suggested. Especially contact her if you know the actual original authors whose names were not carried forward as part of the Boundless curation process.

Intercultural Communication Copyright © 2023 by Kathryn Weinland is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

24/7 writing help on your phone

To install StudyMoose App tap and then “Add to Home Screen”

Social Class - Free Essay Examples and Topic Ideas

Social class refers to the hierarchical arrangement of individuals or groups within a society based on their economic status, wealth, occupation, education, social networks, and cultural practices. It is a way of categorizing people into distinct and unequal social strata that determine their access to resources, power, and prestige. Social class often shapes individuals’ life chances, opportunities, and social mobility. Different social classes also have distinct cultural norms, values, and attitudes that reflect their social standing and experiences.

• 📘 Free essay examples for your ideas about Social Class
• 🏆 Best Essay Topics on Social Class
• ⚡ Simple & Social Class Easy Topics
• 🎓 Good Research Topics about Social Class
• ❓ Questions and Answers

Essay examples

Essay topic.

Save to my list

Remove from my list

• Cultural Values Spreading Through Colonization And Imperialism
• Sociological Studies Quiz
• Jane Eyre Analysis on Social Class
• Beka Lamb by Zee Edgell
• Karl Marx – Sociology
• How to Present the Past to Prevent the Future?
• Students Should Wear School Uniforms
• Alfred Doolittle’s Lower Class Representation In Pygmalion
• Trump’s Policies and its Effects on the American Economy
• The characterization and lives led by Gertrude Lodge
• Race, Gender and Class
• One of the Main Supporters
• Life is Not Always Pretty
• Different Views on Social Class
• A Play Be My Baby by Amanda Whittington
• Explaining patterns and trends in health
• American Politics and American Foreign Policy
• Assess the Contribution of Marxism to Our Understanding of the Role of Education
• Does Social Class matter
• Does Social Class Matter or not
• Classism: High School and Social Class
• Pygmalion social class essay
• Social Class, Place and Identity in Edith Wharton`s Works
• Frayn present social class
• Social Stratification Essay
• Social Class in Daisy and Gatsby’s Relationship
• Crime and Social Class – Hypothesis – Working class people commit more crimes than Upper class people
• Social Class Issues in The Stolen Party
• Corellation Between Social Class and People’s Lifes
• Marxist explanations of social class inequalities
• The Effects of Social Class to Family

FAQ about Social Class

👋 Hi! I’m your smart assistant Amy!

Don’t know where to start? Type your requirements and I’ll connect you to an academic expert within 3 minutes.

• Color Blindness Topics Topics: 49
• Animal Rights Research Topics Topics: 55
• Gender Inequality Topics Topics: 75
• Gender Equality Research Topics Topics: 77
• Homelessness Topics Topics: 151
• Social Inequality Research Topics Topics: 77
• Gender Issues Topics Topics: 101
• Gender Stereotypes Paper Topics Topics: 94
• Domestic Violence Topics Topics: 160
• Black Lives Matter Research Topics Topics: 112
• Animal Cruelty Essay Topics Topics: 107
• Animal Abuse Topics Topics: 97
• Animal Testing Topics Topics: 111
• Social Problems Paper Topics Topics: 157
• Animal Ethics Paper Topics Topics: 60

112 Social Class Essay Topics

🏆 best essay topics on social class, 🔎 easy social class research paper topics, 🎓 most interesting social class research titles, 💡 simple social class essay ideas, ❓ social class research questions.

• Social Classes in 19th Century British Literature
• Social Classes and Discrimination in “A Rose for Emily”
• Lawyer’s Social Class Position in Weber’s Views
• Social Class Impact on Family Life
• Police Officers Treatment Towards Civilians Based on Social Class
• Joseph Kahl and Dennis Gilbert’s Model of Social Class
• Social Class, Life Chances and Goals Achievement
• Social Class in the Greed Poem by Philip Schultz Philip Schultz is one of the renowned poets who used his work to portray various issues that affect the stability of a given nation.
• Social Class and Discrimination Practices This paper examines the concept of social class and the influence of history on the formation of stereotypical perceptions and the emergence of discrimination experiences.
• The Importance of Social Classes Social class is an effective technique for allocating roles in society. A society establishes people’s social duties through role allocation.
• Social Class and Sports Participation Social class and standing do matter in sports, especially when it comes to the access of certain individuals to participating.
• Social Stratification, Social Mobility, and Social Classes In sociology, social stratification refers to the classification of people within Society based on their education, wealth, income, power, and family background.
• Social Class and Difference in Theatrical Comedies This essay analyzes the social class and difference in the plays: Tartuffe by Moliere, The Way of the World by Congreve, and A Mid Summer’s Night Dream by Shakespear.
• Social Classes and Capitalism: Sociological Theories This article focuses on the ideas of capitalism based on social classes while describing the concepts of perspective, conflict, symbolic interaction, and functionalism.
• “Mothers on Display: Lunchboxes, Social Class and Moral Accountability” by Harman “Mothers on Display: Lunchboxes, Social Class and Moral Accountability” seeks to address parents’ moral accountability through everyday activities.
• Social Class Mobility in Our Times Some sociologists argue that sociology must be value-free and free of personal or emotional bias. Others say that ultimate objectivity is neither possible nor desirable.
• My Family’s Social Class and Mine Sociologists like Weber have implied that it is generally determined by similarity in income, influence, and rank.
• The Living Place and Social Class Connection This paper is written with the aim of studying the relationship between place and class, namely, whether moving to a larger city affects the standard of living.
• Social Class and Social Movements There are differences between income and wealth, and through these differences, one can understand the meaning of social class.
• Social Class and Socialization Relations The environment in which a child grows is instrumental in influencing their development. This is because they set the stage for a socially masterminded course in a child’s life.
• The Importance of Social Class Showed in Two Novels Both play The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde and Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw demonstrate the importance of social status in the Victorian era.
• Social Class in the United States How Dennis Gilbert and Joseph Kahl’s model of social class, identify family’s social class position on the social class ladder.
• Sociological Issues About Social Class and Poverty, Race and Ethnicity, Gender The aim of this paper is to describe different sociological issues in the USA, such as social class and poverty, race and ethnicity, gender, etc.
• Social Class, Race, and Health The paper explores the way social class and race differences may lead to inequalities when receiving healthcare.
• Youth as a Social Class and Phenomenon Review The given selection of the articles has been chosen on the basis of two criteria: they deal with the youth and they explain different aspects and issues connected with media education
• Social Class in America Social stratification in America has seen the rise of social classes. These classes have their basis on education, gender, race, income, and wealth.
• Wealth to Create Wealth: Social Class in America According to Nasseri, social class is the distinction between groups and individuals these distinctions are different from one society to another.
• Social Class Experience at College The social class to which students belong does have a significant effect on the experience of the students at a college and the opportunities that are presented to them.
• Literacy in Different Social Class In their works, Collins, Scribner, Brandt, Burton, and Hamilton discuss point out that literacy categorically contributes to social class distinction.
• Social Classes in the Canadian Society Social inequality affects various aspects of human life such as property rights, education, healthcare, and quality shelter.
• Social Class, Education, Intelligence Correlation This paper highlights the differences and similarities of two articles to determine the attitudes towards a potential correlation between social class, education, and intelligence.
• Use of Social Programs by Social Class in Canada This paper analyzes the different social classes in Canada. It will research and analyze the historical background of social stratification, current state of affairs, theories and statistics.
• Absolutism: Social Class and Absolute Ruler
• How Social Class Can Change the Way People Handle Punishments?
• Cognition and Cultural Change in Social Class
• Race, Social Class, and Society’s Unequal Distribution According to Max Weber
• Agency and Communion From the Perspective of Self Versus Others: The Moderating Role of Social Class
• Gender Inequality and Social Class Differences in Society
• Language and Social Class in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”
• Social Class and Language: The American Class System
• Race, Ethnicity, and Social Class in American Cities
• Racism, Discrimination, and Social Class Explored in “To Kill A Mockingbird” by Harper Lee
• Social Class, Alcohol Business, and Crime During Prohibition in the 1920s
• How Social Class Affects the Educational Attainment of Boys and Girls?
• Money and Social Class in “Great Expectations” and “Pride and Prejudice”
• Social Class and Body Weight Among Chinese Urban Adults: The Role of the Middle Classes in the Nutrition Transition
• Race and Social Class: Education and Criminal Justice System
• Social Class: Maintaining Divisions Within Society
• Addressing Sexual Role and Social Class and Its Impact on Life
• How Poverty, Social Class, and Culture Influence the Way People Respond to Health and Illness
• American Comedy and Issues of Social Class in America
• How Social Class Affects a Person’s Development in Judith Guest’s “Juno” and Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”
• Emily Bronte and D.H Lawrence’s Exploration of Social Class
• How Social Class Shapes Adolescent Financial Socialization: Understanding Differences in the Transition to Adulthood
• Genealogy and Social Class: Prejudice in “Harry Potter”
• Does Your Social Class Determine Your Future?
• Social Class and Its Effect on Love: Wuthering Heights
• The Impact of Social Class on Inequalities in Educational Outcomes
• How Social Class Can Influence the Buying Behavioral Pattern of Consumers?
• Social Class In 16th Century England
• Feudalism: Social Class and National Government
• How Social Class and Crime Are Intertwined?
• Emma and Social Class in “The Canterbury Tales”
• Social Class and Public Health: Determining Your Health
• Links Between Young Children’s Behavior and Achievement: The Role of Social Class and Classroom Composition
• Jane Eyre: Feminism and Social Class
• Social Class Divide in the American Education System
• English Social Class Hierarchy in “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Robert Louis Stevenson on Social Class
• Marx and Weber’s Views on Social Class and Inequality
• Economic Behavior, Social Class Income, and Consumer Behavior
• Social Class and Ethnic Inequalities in Education
• The Role of Interpersonal Justice Trajectories and Social Class in Perceived Legitimacy of Authority Figures
• Regency Era: Social Class and Money
• How Social Class and Power Can Affect the Lives of Different Individuals?
• Cultural Representations of Social Class
• Link Between Social Class and Health Inequalities
• Social Class and Higher Risk of Divorce
• Pygmalion: Social Class and Doolittle
• ‘New’ and ‘Old’ Social Risks: Life Cycle and Social Class Perspectives on Social Exclusion in Ireland
• Education and Social Class: Conflict Theory and Education
• Race and Social Class: An Asian Market
• What Kind of Society Is Divided Into Social Classes?
• Which Are the Different Kinds of Social Class?
• What Is the Impact of Social Classes on People and Society?
• What Roles Do Race and Social Class Continue to Play in the United States?
• Why Is Social Class Important?
• Are There Social Classes in Totalitarianism?
• Which Social Class Has Emerged in Russia Since 1985?
• What Is the Difference Between Marx’s and Weber’s Theories of Social Class?
• How Does Social Class Influence Parenting Styles?
• What Social Class Were Clergy in Victorian England?
• What Is the Difference Between Social Class and Social Stratification?
• Who Was Part of the Highest Social Class of New Spain?
• What Is the Five-Category Social Class Measure?
• How Did Karl Marx Define Social Class?
• How Do Social Class, Gender, and Sexuality Combine to Define a Person’s Roles in the Family?
• What Social Class Expanded as a Result of Industrialization?
• What Were the Three Social Classes of Ancient Rome?
• What Is Social Class Identity?
• Which Social Class Suffered the Most From Industrialization?
• How Does Social Class Affect Mental Health of a Working Class Person?
• How Did the Code of Hammurabi Reflect Different Social Classes?
• What Is Social Class Discrimination?
• What Health Effects Do Variations in Race, Ethnicity, and Social Class Have?
• How Is Social Class Portrayed in “Jane Eyre”?
• What Were the Main Social Classes in the Feudal System?
• What Do the Social Classes Owe Each Other?
• What Social Class Was the Emphasis of the Northern Renaissance?
• What Do Sociologists Use to Measure Social Class?
• Is Income a Key Factor in Determining a Person’s Social Class?
• How Was Social Class Determined in the Regency Era?

Cite this post

• Chicago (N-B)
• Chicago (A-D)

StudyCorgi. (2022, October 26). 112 Social Class Essay Topics. https://studycorgi.com/ideas/social-class-essay-topics/

"112 Social Class Essay Topics." StudyCorgi , 26 Oct. 2022, studycorgi.com/ideas/social-class-essay-topics/.

StudyCorgi . (2022) '112 Social Class Essay Topics'. 26 October.

1. StudyCorgi . "112 Social Class Essay Topics." October 26, 2022. https://studycorgi.com/ideas/social-class-essay-topics/.

Bibliography

StudyCorgi . "112 Social Class Essay Topics." October 26, 2022. https://studycorgi.com/ideas/social-class-essay-topics/.

StudyCorgi . 2022. "112 Social Class Essay Topics." October 26, 2022. https://studycorgi.com/ideas/social-class-essay-topics/.

These essay examples and topics on Social Class were carefully selected by the StudyCorgi editorial team. They meet our highest standards in terms of grammar, punctuation, style, and fact accuracy. Please ensure you properly reference the materials if you’re using them to write your assignment.

This essay topic collection was updated on January 9, 2024 .

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

The Persistent Grip of Social Class on College Admissions

The SAT is falling out of favor, but a study looking at essays suggests “soft factors” have their own issues.

By Arvind Ashok

It’s hard to disentangle social class from the college admissions process. The University of California system says it’s trying, announcing recently that it’s dropping consideration of the SAT and ACT. (It was part of a settlement in a lawsuit alleging that the tests are biased along lines of race, wealth and disability.)

More than half of U.S. colleges have made the tests optional for fall of 2021 admissions, according to FairTest , a group opposed to college entrance testing.

Because those tests are receiving so much scrutiny, it’s easy to overlook the influence of socioeconomic background on other admissions yardsticks.

Take the college essay. It’s the most important “soft factor” and the fourth-most important overall factor — after grades, curriculum strength and standardized test scores — according to a 2019 survey of admissions employees.

But essays can be polished by a paid professional third party, or helped along by an upper-middle-class parent.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .

• History & Society
• Science & Tech
• Biographies
• Animals & Nature
• Geography & Travel
• Arts & Culture
• Games & Quizzes
• On This Day
• One Good Fact
• New Articles
• Lifestyles & Social Issues
• Philosophy & Religion
• Politics, Law & Government
• World History
• Health & Medicine
• Browse Biographies
• Birds, Reptiles & Other Vertebrates
• Bugs, Mollusks & Other Invertebrates
• Environment
• Fossils & Geologic Time
• Entertainment & Pop Culture
• Sports & Recreation
• Visual Arts
• Demystified
• Image Galleries
• Infographics
• Top Questions
• Britannica Kids
• Saving Earth
• Space Next 50
• Student Center
• Introduction

History and usage of the term

Early theories of class.

• Karl Marx’s social theory of class

Contemporary theories of class

Characteristics of the principal classes.

• Who was Kublai Khan?
• What were Kublai Khan’s accomplishments?
• What was Kublai Khan’s legacy?

social class

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

• National Center for Biotechnology Information - PubMed Central - The psychology of social class: How socioeconomic status impacts thought, feelings, and behaviour
• Oklahoma State University Pressbooks - The Impacts of Social Class
• The New York Times - Social Class is not about only Race
• Social Sci LibreTexts - Social Class
• CORE - The Economic Basis of Social Class
• The History Learning Site - Social Class and Achievement
• Pressbooks @ Howard Community College - Introduction to Sociology: Understanding and Changing the Social World - Social Class in the United States
• The Victorian Web - Social Class
• The Canadian Encyclopedia - Social Class
• social class - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
• Table Of Contents

Recent News

social class , a group of people within a society who possess the same socioeconomic status. Besides being important in social theory, the concept of class as a collection of individuals sharing similar economic circumstances has been widely used in censuses and in studies of social mobility .

The term class first came into wide use in the early 19th century, replacing such terms as rank and order as descriptions of the major hierarchical groupings in society. This usage reflected changes in the structure of western European societies after the industrial and political revolutions of the late 18th century. Feudal distinctions of rank were declining in importance, and the new social groups that were developing—the commercial and industrial capitalists and the urban working class in the new factories—were defined mainly in economic terms, either by the ownership of capital or, conversely, by dependence on wages . Although the term class has been applied to social groups in a wide range of societies, including ancient city-states , early empires , and caste or feudal societies, it is most usefully confined to the social divisions in modern societies, particularly industrialized ones. Social classes must be distinguished from status groups; the former are based primarily upon economic interests, while the latter are constituted by evaluations of the honour or prestige of an occupation, cultural position, or family descent .

Theories of social class were fully elaborated only in the 19th century as the modern social sciences , especially sociology , developed. Political philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes , John Locke , and Jean-Jacques Rousseau discussed the issues of social inequality and stratification, and French and English writers in the late 18th and early 19th centuries put forth the idea that the nonpolitical elements in society, such as the economic system and the family , largely determined a society’s form of political life. This idea was taken farther by the French social theorist Henri de Saint-Simon , who argued that a state’s form of government corresponded to the character of the underlying system of economic production. Saint-Simon’s successors introduced the theory of the proletariat , or urban working class, as a major political force in modern society, directly influencing the development of Karl Marx’s theory of class, which has dominated later discussion of the topic.

Karl Marx ’s social theory of class

For Marx, what distinguishes one type of society from another is its mode of production (i.e., the nature of its technology and division of labour ), and each mode of production engenders a distinctive class system in which one class controls and directs the process of production while another class is, or other classes are, the direct producers and providers of services to the dominant class. The relations between the classes are antagonistic because they are in conflict over the appropriation of what is produced, and in certain periods, when the mode of production itself is changing as a result of developments in technology and in the utilization of labour , such conflicts become extreme and a new class challenges the dominance of the existing rulers of society. The dominant class, according to Marx, controls not only material production but also the production of ideas; it thus establishes a particular cultural style and a dominant political doctrine, and its control over society is consolidated in a particular type of political system . Rising classes that gain strength and influence as a result of changes in the mode of production generate political doctrines and movements in opposition to the ruling class.

The theory of class is at the centre of Marx’s social theory, for it is the social classes formed within a particular mode of production that tend to establish a particular form of state , animate political conflicts, and bring about major changes in the structure of society.

Subsequent theories of class have been chiefly concerned with revising, refuting, or providing an alternative to Marxism . Early in the 20th century, German sociologist Max Weber questioned the importance of social classes in the political development of modern societies, pointing out that religious mores, nationalism , and other factors played significant roles. Weber proposed limiting the concept of class to impersonal income distinctions between groups, thereby distinguishing class from social status , collectivities, or political hierarchies . But the Marxian emphasis on the importance of class conflict—i.e., on the conflict and struggle between the classes for control of the means of production—has been the most controversial issue dividing social theorists in their analysis of class structure. Many opponents of Marxist theory have focused attention on the functional interdependence of different classes and their harmonious collaboration with each other. And indeed, by the mid-20th century, it seemed undeniable that the classes in capitalist societies had tended to lose some of their distinctive character, and the antagonism between them had declined to such an extent that in most economically advanced countries it no longer produced serious political conflict. That trend seemed to have been arrested by the early 21st century, however, as growing inequality of wealth and income became a major political issue in some advanced countries, particularly the United States . Moreover, Marxism’s prediction of the proletariat’s successful revolution against the bourgeoisie and its replacement of the capitalist system with a classless society have rung hollow in light of the dismal record of most Marxist governments and their wholesale collapse from internal causes between 1989 and 1991.

Despite controversies over the theory of class, there is general agreement among social scientists on the characteristics of the principal social classes in modern societies. Sociologists generally posit three classes: upper, working (or lower), and middle.

The upper class in modern capitalist societies is often distinguished by the possession of largely inherited wealth. The ownership of large amounts of property and the income derived from it confer many advantages upon the members of the upper class. They are able to develop a distinctive style of life based on extensive cultural pursuits and leisure activities, to exert a considerable influence on economic policy and political decisions, and to procure for their children a superior education and economic opportunities that help to perpetuate family wealth.

Historically, the principal contrast with the upper class in industrial societies was provided by the working class, which traditionally consisted of manual workers in the extractive and manufacturing industries. Given the vast expansion of the service sector in the world’s most advanced economies, it has been necessary to broaden this definition to include in the working class those persons who hold low-paying, low-skilled, nonunionized jobs in such industries as food service and retail sales. There are considerable differences within the working class, however, and a useful distinction exists between skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled workers that broadly corresponds to differences in income level. What characterizes the working class as a whole is a lack of property and dependence on wages. Associated with this condition are relatively low living standards , restricted access to higher education , and exclusion, to a large extent, from the spheres of important decision making . Aside from the dramatic rise in living standards that occurred in the decades after World War II , the main factor affecting the working class since the mid-20th century was a general shift in the economy from manufacturing to service industries, which reduced the number of manual workers. In the United States and Britain , among other countries, the decline in traditional manufacturing industries left a core of chronically unemployed persons isolated from the economic mainstream in decaying urban areas. This new urban substratum of permanently jobless and underemployed workers has been termed the underclass by some sociologists.

The middle class may be said to include the middle and upper levels of clerical workers, those engaged in technical and professional occupations, supervisors and managers, and such self-employed workers as small-scale shopkeepers, businesspersons, and farmers. At the top—wealthy professionals or managers in large corporations—the middle class merges into the upper class, while at the bottom—routine and poorly paid jobs in sales, distribution, and transport—it merges into the working class.

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• Wiley Open Access Collection

The psychology of social class: How socioeconomic status impacts thought, feelings, and behaviour

Antony s. r. manstead.

1 Cardiff University, UK

Drawing on recent research on the psychology of social class, I argue that the material conditions in which people grow up and live have a lasting impact on their personal and social identities and that this influences both the way they think and feel about their social environment and key aspects of their social behaviour. Relative to middle‐class counterparts, lower/working‐class individuals are less likely to define themselves in terms of their socioeconomic status and are more likely to have interdependent self‐concepts; they are also more inclined to explain social events in situational terms, as a result of having a lower sense of personal control. Working‐class people score higher on measures of empathy and are more likely to help others in distress. The widely held view that working‐class individuals are more prejudiced towards immigrants and ethnic minorities is shown to be a function of economic threat, in that highly educated people also express prejudice towards these groups when the latter are described as highly educated and therefore pose an economic threat. The fact that middle‐class norms of independence prevail in universities and prestigious workplaces makes working‐class people less likely to apply for positions in such institutions, less likely to be selected and less likely to stay if selected. In other words, social class differences in identity, cognition, feelings, and behaviour make it less likely that working‐class individuals can benefit from educational and occupational opportunities to improve their material circumstances. This means that redistributive policies are needed to break the cycle of deprivation that limits opportunities and threatens social cohesion.

We are all middle class now. John Prescott, former Labour Deputy Prime Minister, 1997

Class is a Communist concept. It groups people as bundles and sets them against one another. Margaret Thatcher, former Conservative Prime Minister, 1992

One of the ironies of modern Western societies, with their emphasis on meritocratic values that promote the notion that people can achieve what they want if they have enough talent and are prepared to work hard, is that the divisions between social classes are becoming wider, not narrower. In the United Kingdom, for example, figures from the Equality Trust ( 2017 ) show that the top one‐fifth of households have 40% of national income, whereas the bottom one‐fifth have just 8%. These figures are based on 2012 data. Between 1938 and 1979, income inequality in the United Kingdom did reduce to some extent, but in subsequent decades, this process has reversed. Between 1979 and 2009/2010, the top 10% of the population increased its share of national income from 21% to 31%, whereas the share received by the bottom 10% fell from 4% to 1%. Wealth inequality is even starker than income inequality. Figures from the UK's Office for National Statistics (ONS, 2014 ) show that in the period 2012–2014, the wealthiest 10% of households in Great Britain owned 45% of household wealth, whereas the least wealthy 50% of households owned <9%. How can these very large divisions in material income and wealth be reconciled with the view that the class structure that used to prevail in the United Kingdom until at least the mid‐20th century is no longer relevant, because the traditional working class has ‘disappeared’, as asserted by John Prescott in one of the opening quotes, and reflected in the thesis of embourgeoisement analysed by Goldthorpe and Lockwood ( 1963 )? More pertinently for the present article, what implications do these changing patterns of wealth and income distribution have for class identity, social cognition, and social behaviour?

The first point to address concerns the supposed disappearance of the class system. As recent sociological research has conclusively shown, the class system in the United Kingdom is very much still in existence, albeit in a way that differs from the more traditional forms that were based primarily on occupation. In one of the more comprehensive recent studies, Savage et al . ( 2013 ) analysed the results of a large survey of social class in the United Kingdom, the BBC's 2011 Great British Class Survey, which involved 161,400 web respondents, along with the results of a nationally representative sample survey. Using latent class analysis, the authors identified seven classes, ranging from an ‘elite’, with an average annual household income of £89,000, to a ‘precariat’ with an average annual household income of £8,000. Among the many interesting results is the fact that the ‘traditional working‐class’ category formed only 14% of the population. This undoubtedly reflects the impact of de‐industrialization and is almost certainly the basis of the widely held view that the ‘old’ class system in the United Kingdom no longer applies. As Savage et al .'s research clearly shows, the old class system has been reconfigured as a result of economic and political developments, but it is patently true that the members of the different classes identified by these researchers inhabit worlds that rarely intersect, let alone overlap. The research by Savage et al . revealed that the differences between the social classes they identified extended beyond differences in financial circumstances. There were also marked differences in social and cultural capital, as indexed by size of social network and extent of engagement with different cultural activities, respectively. From a social psychological perspective, it seems likely that growing up and living under such different social and economic contexts would have a considerable impact on people's thoughts, feelings and behaviours. The central aim of this article was to examine the nature of this impact.

One interesting reflection of the complicated ways in which objective and subjective indicators of social class intersect can be found in an analysis of data from the British Social Attitudes survey (Evans & Mellon, 2016 ). Despite the fact that there has been a dramatic decline in traditional working‐class occupations, large numbers of UK citizens still describe themselves as being ‘working class’. Overall, around 60% of respondents define themselves as working class, and the proportion of people who do so has hardly changed during the past 33 years. One might reasonably ask whether and how much it matters that many people whose occupational status suggests that they are middle class describe themselves as working class. Evans and Mellon ( 2016 ) show quite persuasively that this self‐identification does matter. In all occupational classes other than managerial and professional, whether respondents identified themselves as working class or middle class made a substantial difference to their political attitudes, with those identifying as working class being less likely to be classed as right‐wing. No wonder Margaret Thatcher was keen to dispense with the concept of class, as evidenced by the quotation at the start of this paper. Moreover, self‐identification as working class was significantly associated with social attitudes in all occupational classes. For example, these respondents were more likely to have authoritarian attitudes and less likely to be in favour of immigration, a point I will return to later. It is clear from this research that subjective class identity is linked to quite marked differences in socio‐political attitudes.

A note on terminology

In what follows, I will refer to a set of concepts that are related but by no means interchangeable. As we have already seen, there is a distinction to be drawn between objective and subjective indicators of social class. In Marxist terms, class is defined objectively in terms of one's relationship to the means of production. You either have ownership of the means of production, in which case you belong to the bourgeoisie, or you sell your labour, in which case you belong to the proletariat, and there is a clear qualitative difference between the two classes. This worked well when most people could be classified either as owners or as workers. As we have seen, such an approach has become harder to sustain in an era when traditional occupations have been shrinking or have already disappeared, a sizeable middle‐class of managers and professionals has emerged, and class divisions are based on wealth and social and cultural capital.

An alternative approach is one that focuses on quantitative differences in socioeconomic status (SES), which is generally defined in terms of an individual's economic position and educational attainment, relative to others, as well as his or her occupation. As will be shown below, when people are asked about their identities, they think more readily in terms of SES than in terms of social class. This is probably because they have a reasonable sense of where they stand, relative to others, in terms of economic factors and educational attainment, and perhaps recognize that traditional boundaries between social classes have become less distinct. For these reasons, much of the social psychological literature on social class has focused on SES as indexed by income and educational attainment, and/or on subjective social class, rather than social class defined in terms of relationship to the means of production. For present purposes, the terms ‘working class’, which tends to be used more by European researchers, and ‘lower class’, which tends to be used by US researchers, are used interchangeably. Similarly, the terms ‘middle class’ and ‘upper class’ will be used interchangeably, despite the different connotations of the latter term in the United States and in Europe, where it tends to be reserved for members of the land‐owning aristocracy. A final point about terminology concerns ‘ideology’, which will here be used to refer to a set of beliefs, norms and values, examples being the meritocratic ideology that pervades most education systems and the (related) ideology of social mobility that is prominent in the United States.

Socioeconomic status and identity

Social psychological analyses of identity have traditionally not paid much attention to social class or SES as a component of identity. Instead, the focus has been on categories such as race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality and age. Easterbrook, Kuppens, and Manstead ( 2018 ) analysed data from two large, representative samples of British adults and showed that respondents placed high subjective importance on their identities that are indicative of SES. Indeed, they attached at least as much importance to their SES identities as they did to identities (such as ethnicity or gender) more commonly studied by self and identity researchers. Easterbrook and colleagues also showed that objective indicators of a person's SES were robust and powerful predictors of the importance they placed on different types of identities within their self‐concepts: Those with higher SES attached more importance to identities that are indicative of their SES position, but less importance on identities that are rooted in basic demographics or related to their sociocultural orientation (and vice versa).

To arrive at these conclusions, Easterbook and colleagues analysed data from two large British surveys: The Citizenship Survey (CS; Department for Communities and Local Government, 2012 ); and Understanding Society: The UK Household Longitudinal Study (USS; Buck & McFall, 2012 ). The CS is a (now discontinued) biannual survey of a regionally representative sample of around 10,000 adults in England and Wales, with an ethnic minority boost sample of around 5,000. The researchers analysed the most recent data, collected via interviews in 2010–2011. The USS is an annual longitudinal household panel survey that began in 2009. Easterbrook and colleagues analysed Wave 5 (2013–2014), the more recent of the two waves in which the majority of respondents answered questions relevant to class and other social identities.

Both the CS and the USS included a question about the extent to which respondents incorporated different identities into their sense of self. Respondents were asked how important these identities were ‘to your sense of who you are’. The CS included a broad range of identities, including profession, ethnic background, family, gender, age/life stage, income and education. The USS included a shorter list of identities, including profession, education, ethnic background, family, gender and age/life stage. When the responses to these questions were factor analysed, Easterbrook and colleagues found three factors that were common to the two datasets: SES‐based identities (e.g., income), basic‐demographic identities (e.g., age), and identities based on sociocultural orientation (e.g., ethnic background). In both datasets, the importance of each of these three identities was systematically related to objective indicators of the respondents’ SES: As the respondent's SES increased, the subjective importance of SES‐related identities increased, whereas the importance of basic‐demographic and (to a lesser extent) sociocultural identities decreased. Interestingly, these findings echo those of a qualitative, interview‐based study conducted with American college students: Aries and Seider ( 2007 ) found that affluent respondents were more likely than their less affluent counterparts to acknowledge the importance of social class in shaping their identities. As the researchers put it, ‘The affluent students were well aware of the educational benefits that had accrued from their economically privileged status and of the opportunities that they had to travel and pursue their interests. The lower‐income students were more likely to downplay class in their conception of their own identities than were the affluent students’ (p. 151).

Thus, despite SES receiving relatively scant attention from self and identity researchers, there is converging quantitative and qualitative evidence that SES plays an important role in structuring the self‐concept.

Contexts that shape self‐construal: Home, school, and work

Stephens, Markus, and Phillips ( 2014 ) have analysed the ways in which social class shapes the self‐concept through the ‘gateway contexts’ of home, school, and work. With a focus on the United States, but with broader implications, they argue that social class gives rise to culture‐specific selves and patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting. One type of self they label ‘hard interdependence.’ This, they argue, is characteristic of those who grow up in low‐income, working‐class environments. As the authors put it, ‘With higher levels of material constraints and fewer opportunities for influence, choice, and control, working‐class contexts tend to afford an understanding of the self and behavior as interdependent with others and the social context’ (p. 615). The ‘hard’ aspect of this self derives from the resilience that is needed to cope with adversity. The other type of self the authors identify is ‘expressive independence’, which is argued to be typical of those who grow up in affluent, middle‐class contexts. By comparison with working‐class people, those who grow up in middle‐class households ‘need to worry far less about making ends meet or overcoming persistent threats … Instead, middle‐class contexts enable people to act in ways that reflect and further reinforce the independent cultural ideal – expressing their personal preferences, influencing their social contexts, standing out from others, and developing and exploring their own interests’ (p. 615). Stephens and colleagues review a wide range of work on socialization that supports their argument that the contexts of home, school and workplace foster these different self‐conceptions. They also argue that middle‐class schools and workplaces use expressive independence as a standard for measuring success, and thereby create institutional barriers to upward social mobility.

The idea that schools are contexts in which social class inequalities are reinforced may initially seem puzzling, given that schools are supposed to be meritocratic environments in which achievement is shaped by ability and effort, rather than by any advantage conferred by class background. However, as Bourdieu and Passeron ( 1990 ) have argued, the school system reproduces social inequalities by promoting norms and values that are more familiar to children from middle‐class backgrounds. To the extent that this helps middle‐class children to outperform their working‐class peers, the ‘meritocratic’ belief that such performance differences are due to differences in ability and/or effort will serve to ‘explain’ and legitimate unequal performance. Consistent with this argument, Darnon, Wiederkehr, Dompnier, and Martinot ( 2018 ) primed the concept of merit in French fifth‐grade schoolchildren and found that this led to lower scores on language and mathematics tests – but that this only applied to low‐SES children. Moreover, the effect of the merit prime on test performance was mediated by the extent to which the children endorsed meritocratic beliefs. Here, then, is evidence that the ideology of meritocracy helps to reproduce social class differences in school settings.

Subjective social class

Stephens et al .’s ( 2014 ) conceptualization of culture‐specific selves that vary as a function of social class is compatible with the ‘subjective social rank’ argument advanced by Kraus, Piff, and Keltner ( 2011 ). The latter authors argue that the differences in material resources available to working‐ and middle‐class people create cultural identities that are based on subjective perceptions of social rank in relation to others. These perceptions are based on distinctive patterns of observable behaviour arising from differences in wealth, education, and occupation. ‘To the extent that these patterns of behavior are both observable and reliably associated with individual wealth, occupational prestige, and education, they become potential signals to others of a person's social class’ (Kraus et al ., 2011 , p. 246). Among the signals of social class is non‐verbal behaviour. Kraus and Keltner ( 2009 ) studied non‐verbal behaviour in pairs of people from different social class backgrounds and found that whereas upper‐class individuals were more disengaged non‐verbally, lower‐class individuals exhibited more socially engaged eye contact, head nods, and laughter. Furthermore, when naïve observers were shown 60‐s excerpts of these interactions, they used these disengaged versus engaged non‐verbal behavioural styles to make judgements of the educational and income backgrounds of the people they had seen with above‐chance accuracy. In other words, social class differences are reflected in social signals, and these signals can be used by individuals to assess their subjective social rank. By comparing their wealth, education, occupation, aesthetic tastes, and behaviour with those of others, individuals can determine where they stand in the social hierarchy, and this subjective social rank then shapes other aspects of their social behaviour. More recent research has confirmed these findings. Becker, Kraus, and Rheinschmidt‐Same ( 2017 ) found that people's social class could be judged with above‐chance accuracy from uploaded Facebook photographs, while Kraus, Park, and Tan ( 2017 ) found that when Americans were asked to judge a speaker's social class from just seven spoken words, the accuracy of their judgments was again above chance.

The fact that there are behavioural signals of social class also opens up the potential for others to hold prejudiced attitudes and to engage in discriminatory behaviour towards those from a lower social class, although Kraus et al . ( 2011 ) focus is on how the social comparison process affects the self‐perception of social rank, and how this in turn affects other aspects of social behaviour. These authors argue that subjective social rank ‘exerts broad influences on thought, emotion, and social behavior independently of the substance of objective social class’ (p. 248). The relation between objective and subjective social class is an interesting issue in its own right. Objective social class is generally operationalized in terms of wealth and income, educational attainment, and occupation. These are the three ‘gateway contexts’ identified by Stephens et al . ( 2014 ). As argued by them, these contexts have a powerful influence on individual cognition and behaviour who operate within them, but they do not fully determine how individuals developing and living in these contexts think, feel, and act. Likewise, there will be circumstances in which individuals who objectively are, say, middle‐class construe themselves as having low subjective social rank as a result of the context in which they live.

There is evidence from health psychology that measures of objective and subjective social class have independent effects on health outcomes, with subjective social class explaining variation in health outcomes over and above what can be accounted for in terms of objective social class (Adler, Epel, Castellazzo, & Ickovics, 2000 ; Cohen et al ., 2008 ). For example, in the prospective study by Cohen et al . ( 2008 ), 193 volunteers were exposed to a cold or influenza virus and monitored in quarantine for objective and subjective signs of illness. Higher subjective class was associated with less risk of becoming ill as a result of virus exposure, and this relation was independent of objective social class. Additional analyses suggested that the impact of subjective social class on likelihood of becoming ill was due in part to differences in sleep quantity and quality. The most plausible explanation for such findings is that low subjective social class is associated with greater stress. It may be that seeing oneself as being low in subjective class is itself a source of stress, or that it increases vulnerability to the effects of stress.

Below I organize the social psychological literature on social class in terms of the impact of class on three types of outcome: thought , encompassing social cognition and attitudes; emotion , with a focus on moral emotions and prosocial behaviour; and behaviour in high‐prestige educational and workplace settings. I will show that these impacts of social class are consistent with the view that the different construals of the self that are fostered by growing up in low versus high social class contexts have lasting psychological consequences.

Social cognition and attitudes

The ways in which these differences in self‐construal shape social cognition have been synthesized into a theoretical model by Kraus, Piff, Mendoza‐Denton, Rheinschmidt, and Keltner ( 2012 ). This model is shown in Figure  1 . They characterize the way lower‐class individuals think about the social environment as ‘contextualism’, meaning a psychological orientation that is motivated by the need to deal with external constraints and threats; and the way that upper‐class people think about the social environment as ‘solipsism’, meaning an orientation that is motivated by internal states such as emotion and by personal goals. One way in which these different orientations manifest themselves is in differences in responses to threat. The premise here is that lower‐class contexts are objectively characterized by greater levels of threat, as reflected in less security in employment, housing, personal safety, and health. These chronic threats foster the development of a ‘threat detection system’, with the result that people who grow up in such environments have a heightened vigilance to threat.

Model of the way in which middle‐ and working‐class contexts shape social cognition, as proposed by Kraus et al . ( 2012 ). From Kraus et al . ( 2012 ), published by the American Psychological Association. Reprinted with permission.

Another important difference between the contextualist lower‐class orientation and the solipsistic upper‐class one, according to Kraus et al . ( 2012 ), is in perceived control. Perceived control is closely related to other key psychological constructs, such as attributions. The evidence shows very clearly that those with lower subjective social class are also lower in their sense of personal control, and it also suggests that this reduced sense of control is related to a preference for situational (rather than dispositional) attributions for a range of social phenomena, including social inequality. The logic connecting social class to perceptions of control is straightforward: Those who grow up in middle‐ or upper‐class environments are likely to have more material and psychological resources available to them, and as a result have stronger beliefs about the extent to which they can shape their own social outcomes; by contrast, those who grow up in lower‐class environments are likely to have fewer resources available to them, and as a result have weaker beliefs about their ability to control their outcomes. There is good empirical support for these linkages. In a series of four studies, Kraus, Piff, and Keltner ( 2009 ) found that, by comparison with their higher subjective social class counterparts, lower subjective social class individuals (1) reported lower perceived control and (2) were more likely to explain various phenomena, ranging from income inequality to broader social outcomes like getting into medical school, contracting HIV, or being obese, as caused by external factors, ones that are beyond the control of the individual. Moreover, consistent with the authors’ reasoning, there was a significant indirect effect of subjective social class on the tendency to see phenomena as caused by external factors, via perceived control.

Another important social cognition measure in relation to social class is prejudice. There are two aspects of prejudice in this context. One is prejudice against people of a different class than one's own and especially attitudes towards those who are poor or unemployed; the other is the degree to which people's prejudiced attitudes about other social groups are associated with their own social class. Regarding attitudes to people who belong to a different social class, the UK evidence clearly shows that attitudes to poverty have changed over the last three decades, in that there is a rising trend for people to believe that those who live in need do so because of a lack of willpower, or because of laziness, accompanied by a corresponding decline in the belief that people live in need because of societal injustice (Clery, Lee, & Kunz, 2013 ). Interestingly, in their analysis of British Social Attitudes data over a period of 28 years, Clery et al . conclude that ‘there are no clear patterns of change in the views of different social classes, suggesting changing economic circumstances exert an impact on attitudes to poverty across society, not just among those most likely to be affected by them’ (p. 18). Given the changing attitudes to poverty, it is unsurprising to find that public attitudes to welfare spending and to redistributive taxation have also changed in a way that reflects less sympathy for those living in poverty. For example, attitudes to benefits for the unemployed have changed sharply in the United Kingdom since 1997, when a majority of respondents still believed that benefits were too low. By 2008, an overwhelming majority of respondents believed that these benefits were too high (Taylor‐Gooby, 2013 ). The way in which economic austerity has affected attitudes to these issues was the subject of qualitative research conducted by Valentine ( 2014 ). Interviews with 90 people in northern England, drawn from a range of social and ethnic backgrounds, showed that many respondents believed that unemployment is due to personal, rather than structural, failings, and that it is a ‘lifestyle choice’, leading interviewees to blame the unemployed for their lack of work and to have negative attitudes to welfare provision. Valentine ( 2014 , p. 2) observed that ‘a moralised sense of poverty as the result of individual choice, rather than structural disadvantage and inequality, was in evidence across the majority of respondents’, and that ‘Negative attitudes to welfare provision were identified across a variety of social positions and were not exclusively reserved to individuals from either working class or middle class backgrounds’.

Turning to the attitudes to broader social issues held by members of different social classes, there is a long tradition in social science of arguing that working‐class people are more prejudiced on a number of issues, especially with respect to ethnic minorities and immigrants (e.g., Lipset, 1959 ). Indeed, there is no shortage of evidence showing that working‐class white people do express more negative attitudes towards these groups. One explanation for this association is that working‐class people tend to be more authoritarian – a view that can be traced back to the early research on the authoritarian personality (Adorno, Frenkel‐Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950 ). Recent research providing evidence in favour of this view is reported by Carvacho et al . ( 2013 ). Using a combination of cross‐sectional surveys and longitudinal studies conducted in Europe and Chile, these authors focused on the role of ideological attitudes, in the shape of right‐wing authoritarianism (RWA; Altemeyer, 1998 ) and social dominance orientation (SDO; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999 ), as mediators of the relation between social class and prejudice. To test their predictions, the researchers analysed four public opinion datasets: one based on eight representative samples in Germany; a second based on representative samples from four European countries (France, Germany, Great Britain, and the Netherlands); a third based on longitudinal research in Germany; and a fourth based on longitudinal research in Chile. Consistent with previous research, the researchers found that income and education, the two indices of social class that they used, predicted higher scores on a range of measures of prejudice, such that lower income and education were associated with greater prejudice – although education proved to be a more consistently significant predictor of prejudice than income did. RWA and SDO were negatively associated with income and education, such that higher scores on income and education predicted lower scores on RWA and SDO. Finally, there was also evidence consistent with the mediation hypothesis: The associations between income and education, on the one hand, and measures of prejudice, on the other, were often (but not always) mediated by SDO and (more consistently) RWA. Carvacho and colleagues concluded that ‘the working class seems to develop and reproduce an ideological configuration that is generally well suited for legitimating the social system’ (p. 283).

Indeed, a theme that emerges from research on social class and attitudes is that ideological factors have a powerful influence on attitudes. The neoliberal ideology that has dominated political discourse in most Western, industrialized societies in the past three decades has influenced attitudes to such an extent that even supporters of left‐of‐centre political parties, such as the Labour Party in the United Kingdom, regard poverty as arising from individual factors and tend to hold negative beliefs about the level of welfare benefits for the unemployed. Such attitudes are shared to a perhaps surprising extent by working‐class people (Clery et al ., 2013 ) and, as we have seen, the research by Carvacho et al . ( 2013 ) suggests that working‐class people endorse ideologies that endorse and preserve a social system that materially disadvantages them.

The notion that people who are disadvantaged by a social system are especially likely to support it is known as the ‘system justification hypothesis’, which holds that ‘people who suffer the most from a given state of affairs are paradoxically the least likely to question, challenge, reject, or change it’ (Jost, Pelham, Sheldon, & Sullivan, 2003 , p. 13). The rationale for this prediction derives in part from cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger, 1957 ), the idea being that it is psychologically inconsistent to experience oppression but not to protest against the system that causes it. One way to reduce the resulting dissonance is to support the system even more strongly, in the same way that those who have to go through an unpleasant initiation rite in order to join a group or organization become more strongly committed to it.

Two large‐scale studies of survey data (Brandt, 2013 ; Caricati, 2017 ) have cast considerable doubt on the validity of this hypothesis, showing that any tendency for people who are at the bottom of a social system to be more likely to support the system than are their advantaged counterparts is, at best, far from robust. Moreover, it has been argued that there is in any case a basic theoretical inconsistency between system justification theory and cognitive dissonance theory (Owuamalam, Rubin, & Spears, 2016 ). However, the fact that working‐class people may not be more supportive of the capitalist system than their middle‐ and upper‐class counterparts does not mean that they do not support the system. Thus, the importance of Carvacho et al .'s ( 2013 ) findings is not necessarily undermined by the results reported by Brandt ( 2013 ) and Caricati ( 2017 ). Being willing to legitimate the system is not the same thing as having a stronger tendency to do this than people who derive greater advantages from the system.

The finding that there is an association between social class and prejudice has also been explained in terms of economic threat. The idea here is that members of ethnic minorities and immigrants also tend to be low in social status and are therefore more likely to be competing with working‐class people than with middle‐class people for jobs, housing, and other services. A strong way to test the economic threat explanation would be to assess whether higher‐class people are prejudiced when confronted with immigrants who are highly educated and likely to be competing with them for access to employment and housing. Such a test was conducted by Kuppens, Spears, Manstead, and Tausch ( 2018 ). These researchers examined whether more highly educated participants would express negative attitudes towards highly educated immigrants, especially when threat to the respondents’ own jobs was made salient, either by drawing attention to the negative economic outlook or by subtly implying that the respondents’ own qualifications might be insufficient in the current job market. Consistent with the economic threat hypothesis, a series of experimental studies with student participants in different European countries showed that attitudes to immigrants were most negative when the immigrants also had a university education.

The same researchers also combined US census data with American National Election Study survey data to examine whether symbolic racism was higher in areas where there was a higher number of Blacks with a similar education to that of the White participants. In areas where Blacks were on average less educated, a higher number Blacks was associated with more symbolic racism among Whites who had less education, but in areas where Blacks were on average highly educated, a higher number of Blacks was associated with more symbolic racism on the part of highly educated White people. Again, these findings are consistent with the view that prejudice arises from economic threat.

Research reported by Jetten, Mols, Healy, and Spears ( 2017 ) is also relevant to this issue. These authors examined how economic instability affects low‐SES and high‐SES people. Unsurprisingly, they found that collective angst was higher among low‐SES participants. However, they also found that high‐SES participants expressed anxiety when they were presented with information suggesting that there was high economic instability, that is, that the ‘economic bubble’ might be about to burst. Moreover, they were more likely to oppose immigration when economic instability was said to be high, rather than low. These results reflect the fact that high‐SES people have a lot to lose in times of economic crisis, and that this ‘fear of falling’ is associated with opposition to immigration.

Together, these results provide good support for an explanation of the association between social class and prejudice in terms of differential threat to the group (see also Brandt & Henry, 2012 ; Brandt & Van Tongeren, 2017 ). Ethnic minorities and immigrants typically pose most threat to the economic well‐being of working‐class people who have low educational qualifications, and this provides the basis for the observation that working‐class people are more likely to be prejudiced. The fact that higher‐educated and high‐SES people express negative views towards ethnic minorities and immigrants when their economic well‐being is threatened shows that it is perceived threat to one's group's interests that underpins this prejudice. It is also worth noting that the perception of threat to a group's economic interests is likely to be greater during times of economic recession.

Emotion and prosocial behaviour

A strong theme emerging from research investigating the relation between social class and emotion is that lower‐class individuals score more highly on measures of empathy. The rationale for expecting such a link is that because lower‐class individuals are more inclined to explain events in terms of external factors, they should be more sensitive to the ways in which external events shape the emotions of others, and therefore better at judging other people's emotions. A complementary rationale is that the tendency for lower social class individuals to be more socially engaged and to have more interdependent social relationships should result in greater awareness of the emotions experienced by others. This reasoning was tested in three studies reported by Kraus, Côté, and Keltner ( 2010 ).

In the first of these studies, the authors examined the relation between educational attainment (a proxy for social class) and scores on the emotion recognition subscale of the Mayer‐Salovey‐Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2002 ). High‐school‐educated participants attained a higher score than did their college‐educated counterparts. In a second study, pairs of participants took part in a hypothetical job interview in which an experimenter asked each of them a set of standard questions. This interaction provided the basis for the measure of empathic accuracy, in that each participant was asked to rate both their own emotions and their partner's emotions during the interview. Subjective social class was again related to empathic accuracy, with lower‐class participants achieving a higher score. Moreover, lower‐class participants were more inclined to explain decisions they made in terms of situational rather than dispositional factors, and the relation between subjective social class and empathy was found to be mediated by this tendency to explain decisions in terms of situational factors. The researchers conducted a third study in which they manipulated subjective social class. This time they assessed empathic accuracy using the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (Baron‐Cohen, Wheelwright, Hill, Raste, & Plumb, 2001 ). Participants who were temporarily induced to experience lower social class were better at recognizing emotions from the subtle cues available from the eye region of the face.

These findings are compatible with the view that lower social class individuals are more sensitive to contextual variation and more inclined to explain events in situational terms. However, some aspects of the results are quite surprising. For example, there seems to be no compelling reason to predict that greater sensitivity to contextual variation would be helpful in judging static facial expressions, which were the stimuli in Studies 1 and 3 of Kraus et al .'s ( 2010 ) research. Thus, the relation between social class and emotion recognition in these studies would seem to depend on the notion that the greater interdependence that is characteristic of lower‐class social environments fosters greater experience with, and therefore knowledge of, the relation between facial movement and subjective emotion, although it still seems surprising that a temporary induction of lower subjective social class, as used in Study 3, should elicit the same effect as extensive real‐life experience of inhabiting lower‐class environments.

If lower‐class individuals are more empathic than their higher‐class counterparts, and are therefore better at recognizing the distress or need of others, this is likely to influence their behaviour in settings where people are distressed and/or in need. This, indeed, is what the evidence suggests. In a series of four studies, Piff, Kraus, Côté, Cheng, and Keltner ( 2010 ) found a consistent tendency for higher‐class individuals to be less inclined to help others than were their lower‐class counterparts. In Study 1, participants low in subjective social class made larger allocations in a dictator game (a game where you are free to allocate as much or as little of a resource to another person as you want) played with an anonymous other than did participants high in subjective social class. In Study 2, subjective social class was manipulated by asking participants to compare themselves to people either at the very top or very bottom of the status hierarchy ladder, the idea being that subjective social class should be lower for those making upward comparisons and higher for those making downward comparisons. Prosocial behaviour was measured by asking participants to indicate the percentage of income that people should spend on a variety of goods and services, one of which was charitable donations. Participants who were induced to experience lower subjective social class indicated that a greater percentage of people's annual salary should be spent on charitable donations compared to participants who were induced to experience higher subjective social class. In Study 3, the researchers used a combination of educational attainment and household income to assess social class and used social value orientation (Van Lange, De Bruin, Otten, & Joireman, 1997 ) as a measure of egalitarian values. These two variables were used to predict behaviour in a trust game. Consistent with predictions, lower‐class participants showed greater trust in their anonymous partner than did their higher‐class counterparts, and this relation was mediated by egalitarian values. In their final study, the researchers manipulated compassion by asking participants in the compassion condition to view a 46‐s video about child poverty. Higher‐ and lower‐class participants were then given the chance to help someone in need. The researchers predicted that helping would only be moderated by compassion among higher‐class participants, on the grounds that lower‐class participants would already be disposed to help, and the results were consistent with this prediction. Overall, these four studies are consistent in showing that, relative to higher‐class people, lower‐class people are more generous, support charity to a greater extent, are more trusting towards a stranger, and more likely to help a person in distress.

The reliability of this finding has been called into question by Korndörfer, Egloff, and Schmukle ( 2015 ), who found contrary evidence in a series of studies. One way to resolve these apparently discrepant findings is to argue, as Kraus and Callaghan ( 2016 ) did, that the relation between social class and prosocial behaviour is moderated by a number of factors, including whether the context is a public or private one. To test this idea, Kraus and Callaghan ( 2016 ) conducted a series of studies in which they manipulated whether donations made to an anonymous other in a dictator game were made in a private or public context. In the private context, the donor remained anonymous. In the public context, the donor's name and city of residence were announced, along with the donation. Lower‐class participants were more generous in private than in public, whereas the reverse was true for higher‐class participants. Interestingly, higher‐class participants were more likely to expect to feel proud about acting prosocially, and this difference in anticipated pride mediated the effect of social class on the difference between public and private donations.

The fact that lower‐class people have been found to hold more egalitarian values and to be more likely to help regardless of compassion level suggests that it is the greater resources of higher‐class participants that makes them more selfish and therefore less likely to help others. This ‘selfishness’ account of the social class effect on prosocial behaviour is supported by another series of studies reported by Piff, Stancato, Côté, Mendoza‐Denton, and Keltner ( 2012 ), who found that, relative to lower‐class individuals, higher‐class people were more likely to show unethical decision‐making tendencies, to take valued goods from others, to lie in a negotiation, to cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize and to endorse unethical behaviour at work. There was also evidence that these unethical tendencies were partly accounted for by more favourable attitudes towards greed among higher‐class people. Later research shows that the relation between social class and unethical behaviour is moderated by whether the behaviour benefits the self or others. Dubois, Rucker, and Galinsky ( 2015 ) varied who benefited from unethical behaviour and showed that the previously reported tendency for higher‐class people to make more unethical decisions was only observed when the outcome was beneficial to the self. These findings are consistent with the view that the greater resources enjoyed by higher‐class individuals result in a stronger focus on the self and a reduced concern for the welfare of others.

Interestingly, this stronger self‐focus and lesser concern for others’ welfare on the part of higher‐class people are more evident in contexts characterized by high economic inequality. This was shown by Côté, House, and Willer ( 2015 ), who analysed results from a nationally representative US survey and showed that higher‐income respondents were only less generous in the offers they made to an anonymous other in a dictator game than their lower‐income counterparts in areas that were high in economic inequality, as reflected in the Gini coefficient. Indeed, in low inequality areas, there was evidence that higher‐income respondents were more generous than their lower‐income counterparts. To test the causality of this differential association between income and generosity in high and low inequality areas, the authors conducted an experiment in which participants were led to believe that their home state was characterized by high or low degree of economic inequality and then played a dictator game with an anonymous other. High‐income participants were less generous than their low‐income counterparts in the high inequality condition but not in the low inequality condition.

A possible issue with Côté et al . ( 2015 ) research in the current context is that it focuses on income rather than class. Although these variables are clearly connected, class is generally thought to be indexed by more than income. The research nevertheless suggests that economic inequality plays a key role in shaping the attitudes and behaviours of higher‐class individuals. There are at least three (not mutually exclusive) explanations for this influence of inequality. One is that inequality increases the sense of entitlement in higher‐class people, because they engage more often in downward social comparisons. Another is that higher‐class people may be more concerned about losing their privileged position in society if they perceive a large gap between the rich and the poor. A final explanation is that higher‐class people may be more highly motivated to justify their privileged position in society when the gap between rich and poor is a large one. Whichever of these explanations is correct – and they may all be to some extent – the fact that prosocial behaviour on the part of higher‐class individuals decreases under conditions of high economic inequality is important, given that the United States is one of the most economically unequal societies in the industrialized world. In unequal societies, then, it seems safe to conclude that on average, higher‐class individuals are less likely than their lower‐class counterparts to behave prosocially, especially where the prosocial behaviour is not public in nature.

Universities and workplaces

The selective nature of higher education (HE), involving economic and/or qualification requirements to gain entry, makes a university a high‐status context. Working‐class people seeking to attain university‐level qualifications are therefore faced with working in an environment in which they may feel out of place. Highly selective universities such as Oxford and Cambridge in the United Kingdom, or Harvard, Stanford, and Yale in the United States, are especially likely to appear to be high in status and therefore out of reach. Indeed, the proportion of working‐class students at Oxford and Cambridge is strikingly low. According to the UK's Higher Education Statistics Agency , the percentage of students at Oxford and Cambridge who were from routine/manual occupational backgrounds was 11.5 and 12.6, respectively, in the academic year 2008/9. This compares with an ONS figure of 37% of all people aged between 16 and 63 in the United Kingdom being classified with such backgrounds. The figures for Oxford and Cambridge are extreme, but they illustrate a more general phenomenon, both in the United Kingdom and internationally: students at elite, research‐led universities are more likely to come from middle‐ and upper‐class backgrounds than from working‐class backgrounds (Jerrim, 2013 ).

The reasons for the very low representation of working‐class students at these elite institutions are complex (Chowdry, Crawford, Dearden, Goodman, & Vignoles, 2013 ), but at least one factor is that many working‐class students do not consider applying because they do not see themselves as feeling at home there. They see a mismatch between the identity conferred by their social backgrounds and the identity they associate with being a student at an elite university. This is evident from ethnographic research. For example, Reay, Crozier, and Clayton ( 2010 ) interviewed students from working‐class backgrounds who were attending one of four HE institutions, including an elite university (named Southern in the report). A student at Southern said this about her mother's reaction to her attending this elite university: ‘I don't think my mother really approves of me going to Southern. It's not what her daughter should be doing so I don't really mention it when I go home. It's kind of uncomfortable to talk about it’ (p. 116). In a separate paper, Reay, Crozier, and Clayton ( 2009 ) focus on the nine students attending Southern, examining whether these students felt like ‘fish out of water’. Indeed, there was evidence of difficulty in adjusting to the new environment, both socially and academically. One student said, ‘I wasn't keen on Southern as a place and all my preconceptions were “Oh, it's full of posh boarding school types”. And it was all true … it was a bit of a culture shock’ (p. 1111), while another said, ‘If you were the best at your secondary school … you're certainly not going to be the best here’ (p. 1112). A similar picture emerges from research in Canada by Lehmann ( 2009 , 2013 ), who interviewed working‐class students attending a research‐intensive university, and found that the students experienced uncomfortable conflicts between their new identities as university students and the ties they had with family members and non‐student friends.

Such is the reputation of elite, research‐intensive universities that working‐class high‐school students are unlikely to imagine themselves attending such institutions, even if they are academically able. Perceptions of these universities as elitist are likely to deter such students from applying. Evidence of this deterrence comes from research conducted by Nieuwenhuis, Easterbrook, and Manstead ( 2018 ). They report two studies in which 16‐ to 18‐year‐old secondary school students in the United Kingdom were asked about the universities they intended to apply to. The studies were designed to test the theoretical model shown in Figure  2 , which was influenced by prior work on the role of identity compatibility conducted by Jetten, Iyer, Tsivrikos, and Young ( 2008 ). According to the model in Figure  2 , SES influences university choice partly through its impact on perceived identity compatibility and anticipated acceptance at low‐ and high‐status universities.

Theoretical model of the way in which the socioeconomic status ( SES ) influences application to high‐status universities as a result of social identity factors and academic achievement, as proposed by Nieuwenhuis et al . ( 2018 ).

In the first study conducted by Nieuwenhuis and colleagues, students who were 6 months away from making their university applications responded to questions about their perceptions of two universities, one a research‐intensive, selective university (SU), the other a less selective university (LSU). Both universities were located in the same geographical region, not far from the schools where the participants were recruited. In the second study, students who were 6 weeks away from making their university applications responded to similar questions, but this time about three universities in the region, two of which were the same as those in Study 1, while the third was a highly selective institution (HSU). The questions put to respondents measured their perceptions of identity compatibility (e.g., consistency between family background and decision to go to university) and anticipated acceptance (e.g., anticipated identification with students at the university in question). Measures of parental education and academic achievement in previous examinations were taken, as well as the three universities to which they would most like to apply, which were scored in accordance with a published national league table.

In both studies, it was found that relatively disadvantaged students (whose parents had low levels of educational attainment) scored lower on identity compatibility and that low scores on identity compatibility were associated with lower anticipated acceptance at the SU (Study 1) or at the HSU (Study 2). These anticipated acceptance scores, in turn, predicted the type of university to which participants wanted to apply, with those who anticipated feeling accepted at more selective universities being more likely to apply to higher status universities. All of these relations were significant while controlling for academic achievement. Together, the results of these studies show that perceptions of acceptance at different types of university are associated with HE choices independently of students’ academic ability. This helps to explain why highly able students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to settle for less prestigious universities.

Alternatively, working‐class students may opt out of HE altogether. Hutchings and Archer ( 2001 ) interviewed young working‐class people who were not participating in HE and found that a key reason for their non‐participation was a perception that the kinds of HE institutions that were realistically available to them were second‐rate: ‘[O]ur respondents constructed two very different pictures of HE. One was of Oxbridge and campus universities, pleasant environments in which middle‐class students … can look forward to achieving prestigious degrees and careers. The second construction was of rather unattractive buildings in which “skint” working‐class students … have to work hard under considerable pressure, combining study with a job and having little time for social life. This second picture was the sort of HE that our respondents generally talked about as available to them, and they saw it as inferior to ‘real’ HE’ (p. 87).

Despite the deterrent effect of perceived identity incompatibility and lack of psychological fit, some working‐class students do gain entry to high‐status universities. Once there, they are confronted with the same issues of fit. Stephens, Fryberg, Markus, Johnson, and Covarrubias ( 2012 ) describe this as ‘cultural mismatch’, arguing that the interdependent norms that characterize the working‐class backgrounds of most first‐generation college students in the United States do not match the middle‐class independent norms that prevail in universities offering 4‐year degrees and that this mismatch leads to greater discomfort and poorer academic performance. Their cultural mismatch model is summarized in Figure  3 .

Model of cultural mismatch proposed by Stephens, Fryberg, Markus, et al . ( 2012 ). The mismatch is between first‐generation college students’ norms, which are more interdependent than those of continuing‐generation students, and the norms of independence that prevail in universities. From Stephens, Fryberg, Markus, et al . ( 2012 ), published by the American Psychological Association. Reprinted with permission.

To test this model, Stephens, Fryberg, Markus, et al . ( 2012 ) surveyed university administrators at the top 50 national universities and the top 25 liberal arts colleges. The majority of the 261 respondents were deans. They were asked to respond to items expressing interdependent (e.g., learn to work together with others) or independent (e.g., learn to express oneself) norms, selecting those that characterized their institution's culture or choosing statements reflecting what was more often emphasized by the institution. More than 70% of the respondents chose items reflecting a greater emphasis on independence than on interdependence. Similar results were found in a follow‐up study involving 50 administrators at second‐tier universities and liberal arts colleges, showing that this stronger focus on independence was not only true of elite institutions. Moreover, a longitudinal study of first‐generation students found that this focus on independence did not match the students’ interdependent motives for going to college, in that first‐generation students selected fewer independent motives (e.g., become an independent thinker) and twice as many interdependent motives (e.g., give back to the community), compared to their continuing‐generation counterparts, and that this greater focus on interdependent motives was associated with lower grades in the first 2 years of study, even after controlling for race and SAT scores.

As Stephens and her colleagues have shown elsewhere (e.g., Stephens, Brannon, Markus, & Nelson, 2015 ), there are steps that can be taken to reduce working‐class students’ perception that they do not fit with their university environment. These authors argue that ‘a key goal of interventions should be to fortify and to elaborate school‐relevant selves – the understanding that getting a college degree is central to “who I am”, “who I hope to become”, and “the future I envision for myself”’ (p. 3). Among the interventions that they advocate as ways of creating a more inclusive culture at university are: providing working‐class role models; diversifying the way in which university experience is represented, so that university culture also provides ways of achieving interdependent goals that may be more compatible with working‐class students’ values; and ensuring that working‐class students have a voice, for example, by providing forums in which they can express shared interests and concerns.

Although there is a less well‐developed line of work on the ways in which high‐status places of work affect the aspirations and behaviours of working‐class employees, there is good reason to assume that the effects and processes identified in research on universities as places to study generalize to prestigious employment organizations as places to work (Côté, 2011 ). To the extent that many workplaces are dominated by middle‐class values and practices, working‐class employees are likely to feel out of place (Ridgway & Fisk, 2012 ). This applies both to gaining entry to the workplace, by negotiating the application and selection process (Rivera, 2012 ), and (if successful) to the daily interactions between employees in the workplace. In the view of Stephens, Fryberg, and Markus ( 2012 ), many workplaces are characterized by cultures of expressive independence, where working‐class employees are less likely to feel at home. As Stephens et al . ( 2014 , p. 626) argue, ‘This mismatch between working‐class employees and their middle‐class colleagues and institutions could also reduce employees’ job security and satisfaction, continuing the cycle of disadvantage for working‐class employees.’

Towards an integrative model

The work reviewed here provides the basis for an integrative model of how social class affects thoughts, feelings, and behaviour. The model is shown in Figure  4 and builds on the work of others, especially that of Nicole Stephens and colleagues and that of Michael Kraus and colleagues. At the base of the model are differences in the material circumstances of working‐class and middle‐class people. These differences in income and wealth are associated with differences in social capital, in the form of friendship networks, and cultural capital, in the form of tacit knowledge about how systems work, that have a profound effect on the ways in which individuals who grow up in these different contexts construe themselves and their social environments. For example, if you have family members or friends who have university degrees and/or professional qualifications, you are more likely to entertain these as possible futures than if you do not have these networks; and if through these networks you have been exposed to libraries, museums, interviews, and so on, you are more likely to know how these cultural institutions work, less likely to be intimidated by them, and more likely to make use of them. In sum, a middle‐class upbringing is more likely to promote the perception that the environment is one full of challenges that can be met rather than threats that need to be avoided. These differences in self‐construal and models of interpersonal relations translate into differences in social emotions and behaviours that are noticeable to self and others, creating the opportunity for people to rank themselves and others, and for differences in norms and values to emerge. To the extent that high‐status institutions in society, such as elite universities and prestigious employers, are characterized by norms and values that are different from those that are familiar to working‐class people, the latter will feel uncomfortable in such institutions and will perform below their true potential.

Integrative model of how differences in material conditions generate social class differences and differences in social cognition, emotion, and behaviour.

Also depicted in Figure  4 is the way in which ideology moderates the relations between social class, on the one hand, and social cognition and social behaviour, on the other, and the ways in which economic inequality and threat moderate the relations between psychological dispositions and social behaviour. Although there is good evidence for many of the proposed relations depicted in the model, there is relatively little hard evidence concerning the moderating roles of ideology and economic inequality and threat. There is evidence that economic threat is associated with prejudice (e.g., Billiet, Meuleman, & De Witte, 2014 ), and that this also applies to higher‐educated people (e.g., Kuppens et al ., 2018 ). There is also evidence that high economic inequality increases the tendency for high‐income people to be less generous to others (Côté et al ., 2015 ), but these are influences that need further examination. Likewise, there is evidence of the moderating impact of ideology on the translation from social class to social cognition and behaviour (e.g., Wiederkehr, Bonnot, Krauth‐Gruber, & Darnon, 2015 ), but this, too, is an influence that merits additional investigation. A further point worth making is that much of the work on which this integrative model is based was conducted in the United States, which raises the question of the extent to which it is applicable to other contexts. There are some differences between the United States and other Western, industrialized countries that are relevant to the model. For example, the United States is more economically unequal than virtually every other industrialized country (Piketty & Saez, 2014 ). At the same time, the perceived degree of social mobility is greater in the United States than in other countries (Isaacs, 2008 ) – although the reality is that social mobility is lower in the United States (and indeed in the United Kingdom; see Social Mobility Commission, 2017 ) than in many other industrialized counties (Isaacs, 2008 ). These differences in economic inequality and ideology mean that the moderating roles played by these factors may vary from one country to another. For example, there is evidence that those in Europe who are poor or on the left of the political spectrum are more concerned with and unhappy about inequality than are their American counterparts, which may be related to different beliefs about social mobility (Alesina, Di Tella, & MacCulloch, 2004 ). Although there seems to be no good reason to question the generalizability of the other relations posited in the model, there is an obvious need to expand the research base on which the model is founded.

Prospects for social change

The cycle of disadvantage that starts with poor material conditions and ends with lower chances of entering and succeeding in the very contexts (universities and high‐status workplaces) that could increase social mobility is not going to be changed in the absence of substantial pressure for social change. It is therefore interesting that when people are asked about social inequality, they generally say that they are in favour of greater equality.

Norton and Ariely ( 2011 ) asked a nationally representative sample of more than 5,500 Americans to estimate the (then) current wealth distribution in the United States and also to express their preferences for how wealth should be distributed. The key findings from this research were (1) that respondents greatly underestimated the degree of wealth inequality in the United States, believing that the wealthiest 20% of the population owned 59% of the wealth, where the actual figure is 84% and (2) that their preferred distribution of wealth among citizens was closer to equality than even their own incorrect estimations of the distribution (e.g., they expressed a preference that the top 20% should own 32% of the nation's wealth). This also held for wealthy respondents and Republican voters – albeit to a lesser extent than their poorer and Democrat counterparts. Similar results for Australian respondents were reported by Norton, Neal, Govan, Ariely, and Holland ( 2014 ).

These studies have been criticized on the grounds that the ‘quintile’ methodology they use provides respondents with an anchor (20%) from which they adjust upwards or downwards. However, when Eriksson and Simpson ( 2012 ) used a different methodology, they found that although American respondents’ preferences for wealth distribution were more unequal than those found using the quintile methodology, they were still much more egalitarian than the actual distribution. Similar conclusions were reached in a study of American adolescents conducted by Flanagan and Kornbluh ( 2017 ), where participants expressed a strong preference for a much more egalitarian society than the degree of stratification they perceived to exist in the United States. It is also worth noting that similar findings have been reported in a study of preferences for income inequality (Kiatpongsan & Norton, 2014 ), where it was found that American respondents underestimated the actual difference in income between CEOs and unskilled workers (354:1), and that their preferences regarding this difference (7:1) were more egalitarian than were their estimates (30:1).

Given the evidence that citizens consistently express a preference for less wealth and income inequality than what currently prevails in many societies, it is worth considering why there is not greater support for redistributive policies. It is known that one factor that weakens support for such policies is a belief in social mobility. American participants have been found to overestimate the degree of social mobility in the United States (Davidai & Gilovich, 2015 ; Kraus & Tan, 2015 ), and Shariff, Wiwad, and Aknin ( 2016 ) have shown, using a combination of survey and experimental methods, that higher perceived mobility leads to greater acceptance of income inequality. These authors also showed that the effect of their manipulation of perceived income mobility on tolerance for inequality was mediated by two factors: the expectation that respondents’ children would be upwardly mobile; and perceptions of the degree to which someone's economic standing was the result of effort, rather than luck. This suggests that people's attitudes to income inequality – and therefore their support for steps to reduce it – are shaped by their perceptions that (1) higher incomes are possible to achieve, at least for their children, and (2) when these higher incomes are achieved, they are deserved. It follows that any intervention that reduces the tendency to overestimate income mobility should increase support for redistributive policies.

Another factor that helps to account for lack of support for redistribution is people's perceptions of their own social standing or rank. Brown‐Iannuzzi, Lundberg, Kay, and Payne ( 2015 ) have shown that subjective status is correlated with support for redistributive policies, and that experimentally altering subjective status leads to changes in such support. In both cases, lower subjective status was associated with stronger support for redistribution, even when actual resources and self‐interest were held constant. So one's perception of one's own relative social rank influences support for redistribution. This points to the importance of social comparisons and suggests that those who compare themselves with others who have a lower social standing are less likely to be supportive of redistribution.

Evidence that people's attitudes to inequality and to policies that would reduce it can be influenced by quite straightforward interventions comes from research reported by McCall, Burk, Laperrière, and Richeson ( 2017 ). In three studies, these researchers show that exposing American participants to information about the rising economic inequality, compared to control information, led to stronger perceptions that economic success is due to structural factors rather than individual effort. In the largest of the three studies, involving a representative sample of American adults, it was also found that information about rising inequality led to greater endorsement of policies that could be implemented by government and by business to reduce inequality. This research shows that, under the right conditions, even those living in a society that is traditionally opposed to government intervention would support government policies to reduce inequality.

Also relevant to the likelihood of people taking social action on this issue is how descriptions of inequality are framed. Bruckmüller, Reese, and Martiny ( 2017 ) have shown that relatively subtle variations in such framing, such as whether an advantaged group is described as having more or a disadvantaged group is described as having less, influence perceptions of the legitimacy of these differences; larger differences between groups were evaluated as less legitimate when the disadvantaged group was described as having less. Perceptions of the illegitimacy of inequality in group outcomes are likely to evoke group‐based anger, which in turn is known to be one of the predictors of collective action (Van Zomeren, Spears, Fischer, & Leach, 2004 ).

There is solid evidence that the material circumstances in which people develop and live their lives have a profound influence on the ways in which they construe themselves and their social environments. The resulting differences in the ways that working‐class and middle‐ and upper‐class people think and act serve to reinforce these influences of social class background, making it harder for working‐class individuals to benefit from the kinds of educational and employment opportunities that would increase social mobility and thereby improve their material circumstances. At a time when economic inequality is increasing in many countries, this lack of mobility puts a strain on social cohesion. Most people believe that economic inequality is undesirable and, when presented with the evidence of growing inequality, say that they would support government policies designed to reduce it. Given that the social class differences reviewed here have their origins in economic inequality, it follows that redistributive (or ‘predistributive’; Taylor‐Gooby, 2013 ) policies are urgently needed to create greater equality.

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to Colin Foad, Matt Easterbrook, Russell Spears and John Drury for their helpful comments on a previous version of this paper.

• Adler, N. E. , Epel, E. S. , Castellazzo, G. , & Ickovics, J. R. (2000). Relationship of subjective and objective social status with psychological and physiological functioning: Preliminary data in healthy, White women . Health Psychology , 19 , 586–592. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-6133.19.6.586 [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Adorno, T. W. , Frenkel‐Brunswik, E. , Levinson, D. J. , & Sanford, R. N. (1950). The authoritarian personality . New York, NY: Harper & Row. [ Google Scholar ]
• Alesina, A. , Di Tella, R. , & MacCulloch, R. (2004). Inequality and happiness: Are Europeans and Americans different? Journal of Public Economics , 88 , 2009–2042. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2003.07.006 [ Google Scholar ]
• Altemeyer, R. A. (1998). The other “authoritarian personality” . Advances in Experimental Social Psychology , 30 , 47–92. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0065-2601(08)60382-2 [ Google Scholar ]
• Aries, E. , & Seider, M. (2007). The role of social class in the formation of identity: A study of public and elite private college students . Journal of Social Psychology , 147 , 137–157. https://doi.org/10.3200/socp.147.2.137-157 [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Baron‐Cohen, S. , Wheelwright, S. , Hill, J. , Raste, Y. , & Plumb, I. (2001). The “Reading the mind in the eyes” test revised version: A study with normal adults, and adults with Asperger syndrome or high‐functioning autism . Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines , 42 , 241–251. https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-7610.00715 [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Becker, J. C. , Kraus, M. W. , & Rheinschmidt‐Same, M. (2017). Cultural expressions of social class and their implications for group‐related beliefs and behaviors . Journal of Social Issues , 73 , 158–174. https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12209 [ Google Scholar ]
• Billiet, J. , Meuleman, B. , & De Witte, H. (2014). The relationship between ethnic threat and economic insecurity in times of economic crisis: Analysis of European Social Survey data . Migration Studies , 2 , 135–161. https://doi.org/10.1093/migration/mnu023 [ Google Scholar ]
• Bourdieu, P. , & Passeron, J.‐C. (1990). Reproduction in education, society and culture (2nd ed.). London, UK: Sage. [ Google Scholar ]
• Brandt, M. J. (2013). Do the disadvantaged legitimize the social system? A large‐scale test of the status‐legitimacy hypothesis . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 104 , 765–785. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0031751 [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Brandt, M. J. , & Henry, P. J. (2012). Psychological defensiveness as a mechanism explaining the relationship between low socioeconomic status and religiosity . International Journal for the Psychology of Religion , 22 , 321–332. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508619.2011.646565 [ Google Scholar ]
• Brandt, M. J. , & Van Tongeren, D. R. (2017). People both high and low on religious fundamentalism are prejudiced toward dissimilar groups . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 112 ( 1 ), 76–97. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000076 [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Brown‐Iannuzzi, J. L. , Lundberg, K. B. , Kay, A. C. , & Payne, B. K. (2015). Subjective status shapes political preferences . Psychological Science , 26 , 15–26. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614553947 [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bruckmüller, S. , Reese, G. , & Martiny, S. E. (2017). Is higher inequality less legitimate? Depends on how you frame it! British Journal of Social Psychology , 56 , 766–781. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12202 [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Buck, N. , & McFall, S. (2012). Understanding society: Design overview . Longitudinal and Life Course Studies , 3 , 5–17. https://doi.org/10.14301/llcs.v3i1.159 [ Google Scholar ]
• Caricati, L. (2017). Testing the status‐legitimacy hypothesis: A multilevel modeling approach to the perception of legitimacy in income distribution in 36 nations . Journal of Social Psychology , 157 , 532–540. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2016.1242472 [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Carvacho, H. , Zick, A. , Haye, A. , González, R. , Manzi, J. , Kocik, C. , & Bertl, M. (2013). On the relation between social class and prejudice: The roles of education, income, and ideological attitudes . European Journal of Social Psychology , 43 , 272–285. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.1961 [ Google Scholar ]
• Chowdry, H. , Crawford, C. , Dearden, L. , Goodman, A. , & Vignoles, A. (2013). Widening participation in higher education: Analysis using linked administrative data . Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A , 176 , 431–457. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-985x.2012.01043.x [ Google Scholar ]
• Clery, E. , Lee, L. , & Kunz, S. (2013). Public attitudes to poverty and welfare, 1983–2011: Analysis using British attitudes data . London, UK: NatCen Social Research. [ Google Scholar ]
• Cohen, S. , Alper, C. M. , Doyle, W. J. , Adler, N. , Treanor, J. J. , & Turner, R. B. (2008). Objective and subjective socioeconomic status and susceptibility to the common cold . Health Psychology , 27 , 268–274. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-6133.27.2.268 [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Côté, S. (2011). How social class shapes thoughts and actions in organizations . Research in Organizational Behavior , 31 , 43–71. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.riob.2011.09.004 [ Google Scholar ]
• Côté, S. , House, J. , & Willer, R. (2015). High economic inequality leads higher‐income individuals to be less generous . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 112 , 15838–15843. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1511536112 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Darnon, C. , Wiederkehr, V. , Dompnier, B. , & Martinot, D. (2018). ‘Where there is a will, there is a way’: Belief in school meritocracy and the social‐class achievement gap . British Journal of Social Psychology , 57 , 250–262. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12214 [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Davidai, S. , & Gilovich, T. (2015). Building a more mobile America – One income quintile at a time . Perspectives on Psychological Science , 10 , 60–71. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691614562005 [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Department for Communities and Local Government . (2012). Citizenship survey . Retrieved from http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20120919133219/http://www.communities.gov.uk/communities/research/citizenshipsurvey/
• Dubois, D. , Rucker, D. D. , & Galinsky, A. D. (2015). Social class, power, and selfishness: When and why upper and lower class individuals behave unethically . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 108 , 436–449. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000008 [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Easterbrook, M. , Kuppens, T. , & Manstead, A. S. R. (2018). Socioeconomic status and the structure of the self‐concept . Unpublished manuscript, University of Sussex. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Equality Trust . (2017). How has inequality changed? Retrieved from https://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/how-has-inequality-changed
• Eriksson, K. , & Simpson, B. (2012). What do Americans know about inequality? It depends on how you ask them . Judgment and Decision Making , 7 , 741–745. [ Google Scholar ]
• Evans, G. , & Mellon, J. (2016). Social class: Identity, awareness and political attitudes: Why are we still working class? British Social Attitudes , 33 , 1–19. [ Google Scholar ]
• Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Flanagan, C. A. , & Kornbluh, M. (2017). How unequal is the United States? Adolescents’ images of social stratification . Child Development . Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12954 [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Goldthorpe, J. H. , & Lockwood, D. (1963). Affluence and the British class structure . Sociological Review , 11 , 133–163. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954x.1963.tb01230.x [ Google Scholar ]
• Higher Education Statistics Agency . Retrieved from https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/students/overviews?keyword=All&year=13
• Hutchings, M. , & Archer, L. (2001). ‘Higher than Einstein’: Constructions of going to university among working‐class non‐participants . Research Papers in Education , 16 , 69–91. https://doi.org/10.1080/02671520010011879 [ Google Scholar ]
• Isaacs, J. B. (2008). International comparisons of social mobility . Washington, DC: Pew Charitable Trusts. [ Google Scholar ]
• Jerrim, J. (2013). Family background and access to high ‘status’ universities . London, UK: The Sutton Trust. [ Google Scholar ]
• Jetten, J. , Iyer, A. , Tsivrikos, D. , & Young, B. M. (2008). When is individual mobility costly? The role of economic and social identity factors . European Journal of Social Psychology , 38 , 866–879. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.471 [ Google Scholar ]
• Jetten, J. , Mols, F. , Healy, N. , & Spears, R. (2017). “Fear of falling”: Economic instability enhances collective angst among societies’ wealthy class . Journal of Social Issues , 73 , 61–79. https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12204 [ Google Scholar ]
• Jost, J. T. , Pelham, B. W. , Sheldon, O. , & Sullivan, B. N. (2003). Social inequality and the reduction of ideological dissonance on behalf of the system: Evidence of enhanced system justification among the disadvantaged . European Journal of Social Psychology , 33 , 13–36. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.127 [ Google Scholar ]
• Kiatpongsan, S. , & Norton, M. I. (2014). How much (more) should CEOs make? A universal desire for more equal pay . Perspectives on Psychological Science , 9 , 587–593. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691614549773 [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Korndörfer, M. , Egloff, B. , & Schmukle, S. C. (2015). A large scale test of the effect of social class on prosocial behavior . PLoS One , 10 ( 7 ), e0133193 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0133193 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kraus, M. W. , & Callaghan, N. (2016). Social class and prosocial behavior: The moderating role of public versus private contexts . Social Psychological and Personality Science , 7 , 769–777. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550616659120 [ Google Scholar ]
• Kraus, M. W. , Côté, S. , & Keltner, D. (2010). Social class, contextualism, and empathic accuracy . Psychological Science , 21 , 1716–1723. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610387613 [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kraus, M. W. , & Keltner, D. (2009). Signs of socioeconomic status: A thin‐slicing approach . Psychological Science , 20 , 99–106. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02251.x [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kraus, M. W. , Park, J. W. , & Tan, J. J. X. (2017). Signs of social class: The experience of economic inequality in everyday life . Perspectives on Psychological Science , 12 , 422–435. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691616673192 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kraus, M. W. , Piff, P. K. , & Keltner, D. (2009). Social class, the sense of control, and social explanation . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 97 , 992–1004. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0016357 [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kraus, M. W. , Piff, P. K. , & Keltner, D. (2011). Social class as culture: The convergence of resources and rank in the social realm . Current Directions in Psychological Science , 20 , 246–250. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721411414654 [ Google Scholar ]
• Kraus, M. W. , Piff, P. K. , Mendoza‐Denton, R. , Rheinschmidt, M. L. , & Keltner, D. (2012). Social class, solipsism, and contextualism: How the rich are different from the poor . Psychological Review , 119 , 546–572. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028756 [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kraus, M. W. , & Tan, J. J. (2015). Americans overestimate social class mobility . Journal of Experimental Social Psychology , 58 , 101–111. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2015.01.005 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kuppens, T. , Spears, R. , Manstead, A. S. R. , & Tausch, N. (2018). Education and lower prejudice towards immigrants and ethnic minorities: A question of increased enlightenment or reduced economic threat? Unpublished manuscript, University of Groningen. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lehmann, W. (2009). Becoming middle class: How working‐class university students draw and transgress moral class boundaries . Sociology , 43 , 631–647. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038509105412 [ Google Scholar ]
• Lehmann, W. (2013). Habitus transformation and hidden injuries: Successful working‐class university students . Sociology of Education , 87 ( 1 ), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038040713498777 [ Google Scholar ]
• Lipset, S. M. (1959). Democracy and working‐class authoritarianism . American Sociological Review , 24 , 482–501. https://doi.org/10.2307/2089536 [ Google Scholar ]
• Mayer, J. D. , Salovey, P. , & Caruso, D. R. (2002). Mayer‐Salovey‐Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) user's manual . Toronto, ON: Multi‐Health Systems. [ Google Scholar ]
• McCall, L. , Burk, D. , Laperrière, M. , & Richeson, J. A. (2017). Exposure to rising inequality shapes Americans’ opportunity beliefs and policy support . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 114 , 9593–9598. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1706253114 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Nieuwenhuis, M. , Easterbrook, M. , & Manstead, A. S. R. (2018). Accounting for unequal access to higher education: The role of social identity factors . Unpublished manuscript, University of Sussex. [ Google Scholar ]
• Norton, M. I. , & Ariely, D. (2011). Building a better America – One wealth quintile at a time . Perspectives on Psychological Science , 6 , 9–12. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691610393524 [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Norton, M. I. , Neal, D. T. , Govan, C. L. , Ariely, D. , & Holland, E. (2014). The not‐so‐common wealth of Australia: Evidence for a cross‐cultural desire for a more equal distribution of wealth . Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy , 14 , 339–351. https://doi.org/10.1111/asap.12058 [ Google Scholar ]
• Office for National Statistics . (2014). Wealth in Great Britain Wave 4: 2012 to 2014 . Retrieved from https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/compendium/wealthingreatbritainwave4/2012to2014
• Owuamalam, C. K. , Rubin, M. , & Spears, R. (2016). The system justification conundrum: Re‐examining the cognitive dissonance basis for system justification . Frontiers in Psychology , 7 , 1889 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01889 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Piff, P. K. , Kraus, M. W. , Côté, S. , Cheng, B. , & Keltner, D. (2010). Having less, giving more: The influence of social class on prosocial behavior . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 99 , 771–784. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0020092 [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Piff, P. K. , Stancato, D. , Côté, S. , Mendoza‐Denton, R. , & Keltner, D. (2012). Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 109 , 4086–4091. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1118373109 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Piketty, T. , & Saez, E. (2014). Inequality in the long run . Science , 344 , 838–843. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1251936 [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Reay, D. , Crozier, G. , & Clayton, J. (2009). ‘Strangers in paradise’? Working‐class students in elite universities Sociology , 43 , 1103–1121. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038509345700 [ Google Scholar ]
• Reay, D. , Crozier, G. , & Clayton, J. (2010). ‘Fitting in’ or ‘standing out’: Working‐class students in UK higher education . British Educational Research Journal , 36 ( 1 ), 107–124. https://doi.org/10.1080/01411920902878925 [ Google Scholar ]
• Ridgway, C. L. , & Fisk, S. R. (2012). Class rules, status dynamics, and “gateway” interactions In Fiske S. T. & Markus H. R. (Eds.), Facing social class: How societal rank influences interaction (pp. 131–151). New York, NY: Russell Sage. [ Google Scholar ]
• Rivera, L. (2012). Hiring as cultural matching: The case of elite professional service firms . American Sociological Review , 77 , 999–1022. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122412463213 [ Google Scholar ]
• Savage, M. , Devine, F. , Cunningham, N. , Taylor, M. , Li, Y. , Hjellbrekke, J. , … Miles, A. (2013). A new model of social class? Findings from the BBC's Great British class experiment . Sociology , 47 , 219–250. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038513481128 [ Google Scholar ]
• Shariff, A. F. , Wiwad, D. , & Aknin, L. B. (2016). Income mobility breeds tolerance for income inequality: Cross‐national and experimental evidence . Psychological Science , 11 , 373–380. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691616635596 [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Sidanius, J. , & Pratto, F. (1999). Social dominance: An intergroup theory of social hierarchies and oppression . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press; https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139175043 [ Google Scholar ]
• Social Mobility Commission . (2017). State of the nation 2017: Social mobility in Great Britain . London, UK: HM Stationery Office; Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/662744/State_of_the_Nation_2017_-_Social_Mobility_in_Great_Britain.pdf [ Google Scholar ]
• Stephens, N. M. , Brannon, T. N. , Markus, H. R. , & Nelson, J. E. (2015). Feeling at home in college: Fortifying school‐relevant selves to reduce social class disparities in higher education . Social Issues and Policy Review , 9 ( 1 ), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1111/sipr.12008 [ Google Scholar ]
• Stephens, N. M. , Fryberg, S. A. , & Markus, H. R. (2012). It's your choice: How the middle‐class model of independence disadvantages working class Americans In Fiske S. T. & Markus H. R. (Eds.), Facing social class: How societal rank influences interaction (pp. 87–106). New York, NY: Russell Sage. [ Google Scholar ]
• Stephens, N. M. , Fryberg, S. A. , Markus, H. R. , Johnson, C. , & Covarrubias, R. (2012). Unseen disadvantage: How American universities’ focus on independence undermines the academic performance of first‐generation college students . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 102 , 1178–1197. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027143 [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Stephens, N. M. , Markus, H. M. , & Phillips, L. T. (2014). Social class culture cycles: How three gateway contexts shape selves and fuel inequality . Annual Review of Psychology , 65 , 611–634. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115143 [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Taylor‐Gooby, P. (2013). Why do people stigmatise the poor at a time of rapidly increasing inequality, and what can be done about it? The Political Quarterly , 84 ( 1 ), 31–42. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-923x.2013.02435.x [ Google Scholar ]
• Valentine, G. (2014). Inequality and class prejudice in an age of austerity . Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute; Retrieved from http://speri.dept.shef.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Brief8-inequality-and-class-prejudice-in-an-age-of-austerity.pdf . [ Google Scholar ]
• Van Lange, P. A. , De Bruin, E. , Otten, W. , & Joireman, J. A. (1997). Development of prosocial, individualistic, and competitive orientations: Theory and preliminary evidence . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 73 , 733 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.73.4.733 [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Van Zomeren, M. , Spears, R. , Fischer, A. H. , & Leach, C. W. (2004). Put your money where your mouth is! Explaining collective action tendencies through group‐based anger and group efficacy . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 87 , 649–664. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.87.5.649 [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Wiederkehr, V. , Bonnot, V. , Krauth‐Gruber, S. , & Darnon, C. (2015). Belief in school meritocracy as a system‐justifying tool for low status students . Frontiers in Psychology , 6 , 1053 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01053 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]

Social Class Discrimination Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Need to write a social class inequality essay? Discrimination and injustice might take place everywhere: in the spheres of education, healthcare, and so on. Find here critical reviews of three articles on the topic. Get inspired to write your own story of social class and inequality!

Introduction

• The War Against the Poor
• Middle of the Class
• When Shelter Feels Like a Prison

Works Cited

There are several attitudes that the middle class and the rich have towards the poor. These attitudes stem from the belief that the world is a just place and people get what they deserve. If one works hard enough and perseveres he or she will be rich. However, the poor person is in that state because of poor decisions such as immorality, crime and alcoholism, lack of ambition and perseverance.

These negative attitudes have caused the middle class and the rich to distance themselves from the poor. The stereotyping of the poor is the genesis of class discrimination. The poor have been excluded as the rest of the nation goes on with their lives.

In this paper, I analyze three articles on social class and inequality to find out whether the authors’ views agree with mine on the negative attitudes towards the poor by the middle class and the rich and the way they have distanced themselves from the poor.

Social Inequality in The War Against the Poor

Herbert Hans, in his article the war against the poor instead of programs to end poverty is arguing that government officials are not addressing poverty but instead making life difficult for the poor. Welfare expenses have always been small however the budget is becoming more and more restrictive.

The poor are being accused of enjoying welfare instead of looking for a job and making sure they remain childless throughout their adolescence. The middle class and the rich feel they are working so hard and the poor are not. These poor people are lumped together with the criminals and accused of making the streets unsafe. The poor have become an excuse or scapegoat for the problems in society. Instead of admitting the decline in morality, the poor are accused of being the only ones with unmarried lovers. Once they get their life in order then they can receive welfare. They are being forced to live up to moral expectations that the working class and the rich speak but do not practice (Hans, 2007, pg 506).

Clearly class bigotry needs to be addressed. The poor have moral failings that are highly noticeable than the middle class but it does not mean it is at a higher proportion. The rich and middle class have access to counseling facilities to tell them their moral failings is as a result of prior abuse or disease.

The poor do not want to marry the fathers of their babies as they are jobless. There is actually scarcity of work; it is not true that the poor do not want to work. The government should address poverty through actively engaging in job creation initiatives and ensuring the actual crime of the poor does not fall below a certain percentage.

The War Against the Poor: Critical Review

The author’s views on class discrimination agree with my views. He concurs that judging the poor harshly for their moral failings and the ability to secure a job is wrong. The middle class and the rich also have moral failings and the middle class has also been experiencing unemployment as jobs are scarce.

Crime and mental illnesses should be viewed as some of the effects of poverty. It is not that the poor and mostly the Blacks have higher criminal tendencies. The middle class and the rich to stop discriminating against the poor and having someone to blame.

The author has also highlighted other concerns that I agree with. Hans says that the government, politicians and public are making life tougher for the poor. I agree with Hans that the focus should be on creation of jobs for the poor. If the country does not stop attacking the poor, the morale, quality of life and economic competitiveness will only go down.

Discrimination in Middle of the Class

The article Middle of the class published in the Economists is an argumentative piece of writing that questions the sustainability of the American Dream. America has always been defined as a country where anyone can become rich or wealthy if they just work hard. Shows like American Idol prove this.

The country has had presidents from humble backgrounds like Benjamin Franklin who was the 15 th child of a candle maker. However the equality of opportunity in America for all its citizens is rapidly diminishing.

The author gives the statistical figures on how the rich have become richer while the poor have become even poorer widening the income gap even more. Secondly social mobility has gone down. A lower and lower percentage of people are able to change the social class they are in through increase in earnings over a period of ten years.

There have also been changes in the economy with a shift towards technical skills requiring workers who have a university degree. This has caused a high increase of the income gap between college and high school graduates. It has become hard to climb the corporate ladder or change jobs if one does not have a university degree. The author suggests that the American society is becoming an educational stratified society

in other words a meritocracy. The rise in university education is also providing a hurdle for middle class families to attend elite universities. The representation of the rich in these elite universities has increased more than the representation of the poor. The mean income of the families that have enrolled their children in Harvard is $150,000(The Economist, 2007, pg 528).

During the period 2001-2004, States found themselves facing a budget squeeze. They responded by increasing the fees of state colleges where the middle class take their children to learn. This proves that the American system is enforcing more income inequalities through educational differences. The rich children are more likely to get a degree than a child from the bottom quarter income level.

There is also a worrying trend in the society that further aggravates class and educational stratification. The chances of an individual getting access to a good education, a good job and good prospects in life is determined by the family the person is born into.

College graduates tend to marry college graduates. Therefore in the graduates home the returns of the degree is double and their children benefit even more with opportunities to attend better schools.

There is therefore great trouble in being poor. If in the American society to be socially mobile you must have a great education, a job and married with children then the rich start off with higher advantages.

There needs to be policy changes where the method by which schools are financed is changed and giving more federal help to poorer colleges. This will only happen when the American politicians and the public recognize there is a problem.

Middle of the Class: Critical Review

The author, like Hans concurs with my argument that the poor are being judged too harshly in society. The reason the poor are not able to support themselves is not that they are lazy or lack ambition.

Rather there is a limitation on the equality of opportunity when it comes to the middle class and the poor in the corporate world. The country is being affected by globalization and technology changes; therefore the requirement of a degree is becoming mandatory.

If what it takes to succeed in the American corporate society is the attainment of a degree then the government should ensure that children from all social backgrounds have access to this type of education. Making education costs high does not help the poor and middle class at all.

It only goes to aggravate the existent inequalities between the rich and the poor. As the author has given statistics, in the last few years the rich have been becoming richer and the poor becoming poorer. The government needs to step in and address the situation.

Social Inequality in When Shelter Feels Like a Prison

The two articles narrated on the stereotypes held by society towards the poor while the article in the Economist discusses the widening gap between the rich and the poor. Both papers focus on the poor. The third article written by Charmion Brown tells of the author’s experiences growing up in a homeless shelter. The real life story further reinforces my argument on the distancing of the poor by society.

In light of her first hand experiences in the place she feels she can only compare it a prison. First of all, the place is cramped with four bunk beds fitted in each tiny room (Browne, 2007, pg 531).

There is absolutely no privacy. One has to take care of their things or they will be stolen. There is a queue for food for the homeless. The author learnt that if you do not make the line two hours before the kitchen is open, one would miss food. There are no curtains in the bathrooms yet the facility is being shared by more than one hundred people. The author felt like the place was a prison.

When Shelter Feels Like a Prison: Critical Review

The author’s experiences in the shelter confirm my views on the abandonment of the poor and homeless in the shelters. The author narrates how the social workers are rare and have no time for them. It is a prison. The government and public needs to stop abandoning the shelters. The living conditions needs to be improved. In my argument I had put forward the assumptions society has concerning the poor people.

They are not successful because they are lazy. The author cautions society and informs them that there were people from broken homes in the shelter due to drug abuse, AIDS and early pregnancy and not because they are lazy. The poor also lack knowledge on how to improve their lives.

The three articles have gone further to reinforce my argument on the existence of negative attitudes and stereotypes for the poor in society. Hans goes further to explain that it is because the poor have become a scapegoat to make other members in the society better. In my argument I had put forward the way society views the world in black and white. The hardworking succeed the poor are the lazy ones.

The article in the economist supports my argument and goes ahead to tell society that actually there is a limitation on equality of opportunity in the country. One may desire a job but he cannot get that job. In my argument I also said that the society distances itself from the poor. The article, When Shelter feels like a Prison clearly shows the abandonment of the poor by society.

Browne, Charmion. “When Shelter Feels Like a Prison” Writing in the Disciplines: A Reader for Writers . Ed. Mary Kennedy. 6 th Ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. 2007. Print.

Hans, Herbert. “The war against the poor instead of programs to end poverty” Writing in the Disciplines: A Reader for Writers . Ed. Mary Kennedy. 6 th Ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. 2007. Print.

The Economist. “The Middle Class” Writing in the Disciplines: A Reader for Writers . Ed. Mary Kennedy. 6 th Ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. 2007. Print.

• Influence of Political, Social, and Cultural Issues
• The Family from a Sociological Approach
• The Han Dynasty Methods
• Hans Zimmer: A Creative Composer and Producer in the Film Industry
• The World of Hans Zimmer Concert's Analysis
• Break up of a Relationship
• Causes of Divorce in America
• Five Viewpoints on Human Nature
• Pre Marriage Counseling: One Year Before Getting Married
• Gender and Media – Relation to Women
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2018, June 4). Social Class Discrimination. https://ivypanda.com/essays/social-class-and-inequality/

"Social Class Discrimination." IvyPanda , 4 June 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/social-class-and-inequality/.

IvyPanda . (2018) 'Social Class Discrimination'. 4 June.

IvyPanda . 2018. "Social Class Discrimination." June 4, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/social-class-and-inequality/.

1. IvyPanda . "Social Class Discrimination." June 4, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/social-class-and-inequality/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Social Class Discrimination." June 4, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/social-class-and-inequality/.

IvyPanda uses cookies and similar technologies to enhance your experience, enabling functionalities such as:

• Basic site functions
• Ensuring secure, safe transactions
• Secure account login
• Remembering account, browser, and regional preferences
• Remembering privacy and security settings
• Analyzing site traffic and usage
• Personalized search, content, and recommendations
• Displaying relevant, targeted ads on and off IvyPanda

Please refer to IvyPanda's Cookies Policy and Privacy Policy for detailed information.

Certain technologies we use are essential for critical functions such as security and site integrity, account authentication, security and privacy preferences, internal site usage and maintenance data, and ensuring the site operates correctly for browsing and transactions.

Cookies and similar technologies are used to enhance your experience by:

• Remembering general and regional preferences
• Personalizing content, search, recommendations, and offers

Some functions, such as personalized recommendations, account preferences, or localization, may not work correctly without these technologies. For more details, please refer to IvyPanda's Cookies Policy .

To enable personalized advertising (such as interest-based ads), we may share your data with our marketing and advertising partners using cookies and other technologies. These partners may have their own information collected about you. Turning off the personalized advertising setting won't stop you from seeing IvyPanda ads, but it may make the ads you see less relevant or more repetitive.

Personalized advertising may be considered a "sale" or "sharing" of the information under California and other state privacy laws, and you may have the right to opt out. Turning off personalized advertising allows you to exercise your right to opt out. Learn more in IvyPanda's Cookies Policy and Privacy Policy .

Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Hamlet — The Theme Of Social Class And Power In Shakespeare’s Hamlet

The Theme of Social Class and Power in Shakespeare’s Hamlet

• Categories: Hamlet William Shakespeare

About this sample

Words: 1209 |

Published: Feb 8, 2022

Words: 1209 | Pages: 2 | 7 min read

• Skinfill, M. (1996). Reconstructing Class in Faulkner's Late Novels: The Hamlet and the Discovery of Capital. Studies in American Fiction, 24(2), 151-169. (https://muse.jhu.edu/article/440423)
• Prior, L. T. (1969). Theme, Imagery, and Structure In" The Hamlet". The Mississippi Quarterly, 22(3), 237-256. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/26473806)
• Brotton, J. (2013). Ways of Seeing Hamlet. In Hamlet (pp. 161-176). Routledge. (https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203060520-10/ways-seeing-hamlet-jerry-brotton)
• Guagliardo, E. J. (2021). The Experience of Authority: Hamlet and the Political Aesthetics of Majesty. English Literary Renaissance, 51(3), 476-502. (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/715427)
• Haque, F. (2016). Revenge and Vengeance in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: A Study of Hamlet’s Pursuit and Procrastination Regarding Revenge. Journal Of Humanities And Social Science, 21(9), 55-59. (http://un.uobasrah.edu.iq/lectures/3541.pdf)

Cite this Essay

To export a reference to this article please select a referencing style below:

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Dr. Karlyna PhD

Verified writer

• Expert in: Literature

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

2 pages / 1126 words

2.5 pages / 1150 words

5 pages / 2049 words

2 pages / 922 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Hamlet

Famous tragedy Hamlet is known for its complex characters and intricate plot. While the titular character of Hamlet himself is undoubtedly the focus of the play, the importance of minor characters should not be overlooked. Minor [...]

In Shakespeare's timeless tragedy, "Hamlet," the complex relationship between the titular character and Ophelia has long been a subject of fascination and debate among scholars and audiences alike. From the uncertainty of their [...]

Within the intricate tapestry of Shakespeare's "Hamlet," a multitude of characters intersect, each bringing forth their unique dimensions to the tragic narrative. Amongst these personalities stands Horatio, a figure whose [...]

The play Hamlet, written by William Shakespeare, recounts the tragic story of a prince who seeks revenge for his father's death. The play, set in the Kingdom of Denmark, is one of the most renowned and revered works in the [...]

“Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?” (Hamilton). You and I, we both cry, we both bleed, and we will both die. One critical lens that sparked my interest the most while reading William Shakepeare’s Hamlet was the [...]

In The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, several characters exhibit the signs of possible psychological disorders, such as Prince Hamlet, Ophelia, and Polonius. With Polonius, Shakespeare seems to characterize a sneaky, [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free