Social class, also called 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.
Class and Race
There is considerable debate in the sociology of race relations over how social inequality based on class and that based on race intertwine or intersect. Are these separate dimensions of inequality that simply coexist? Or are they part of the same reality?
Efforts to develop an understanding of the relationship between class and race have a long history in sociology. In the 1930s and 1940s it was common to conceptualize the issue as "caste and class" (Davis, Gardner, and Gardner 1941). Studies were conducted in southern towns of the United States, and a parallel was drawn between the southern racial order and the Indian caste system. Class differentiation was observed within each of the two racial "castes," but a caste line divided them, severely limiting the social status of upper-class African Americans. This view, while descriptively illuminating, was challenged by Cox (1948), who saw U.S. race relations as only superficially similar to caste and based on a very different dynamic.
The relationship between class and race remains hotly debated today. Wilson (1980, 1987) has argued that class has superceded race as a factor in the continuing disadvantage of black inner-city communities. Wilson argues that economic forces, including the exodus of major industries, have more to do with the social problems of the inner city than do race-based feelings and actions. On the other hand, Omi and Winant (1986) assert the independence of race from classand resist the reduction of race to class forces. They claim that the United States is organized along racial lines from top to bottom and that race is a more primary category than class.
For most Marxist sociologists of race relations, class and race cannot be treated as separate dimensions of inequality that somehow intersect. Rather, they argue that race and class are both part of the same system and need to be understood through an analysis of the system as a whole. Modern race relations are seen as distinctive products of the development of world capitalism. Both racism and capitalism developed together reinforcing one another in a single, exploitative system. The central question then becomes: How has capitalism, as a system based on class exploitation, shaped the phenomena of race and racism?
— Source: Encyclopedia of Sociology
The U.S. Census Bureau does not have an official definition of the "middle class," but it does derive several measures related to the distribution of income and income inequality. Traditionally, the Census Bureau uses two of the more common measures of income inequality: the shares of aggregate income received by households (or other income recipient units such as families) and the Gini index (or index of income concentration). In the shares approach, we rank households from lowest to highest on the basis of income and then divide them into equal population groups, typically quintiles. We then divide the aggregate income of each group by the overall aggregate income to derive shares. The Gini index incorporates more detailed shares data into a single statistic which summarizes the dispersion of the income shares across the whole income distribution. The Gini index ranges from zero, indicating perfect equality (where everyone receives an equal share), to one, perfect inequality (where all the income is received by only one recipient).
Generally, the long-term trend has been toward increasing income inequality. Since 1969, the share of aggregate household income controlled by the lowest income quintile has decreased from 4.1 percent to 3.6 percent in 1997, while the share to the highest quintile increased from 43.0 percent to 49.4 percent. Most noticeably, the share of income controlled by the top 5 percent of households has increased from 16.6 percent to 21.7 percent. Over the same time period, the Gini index rose 17.4 percent to its 1997 level of .459.
Researchers believe that changes in the labor market and, to a certain extent, household composition affected the long-run increase in income inequality. The wage distribution has become considerably more unequal with workers at the top experiencing real wage gains and those at the bottom real wage losses. These changes reflect relative shifts in demand for labor differentiated on the basis of education and skill. At the same time, long-run changes in society's living arrangements have taken place also tending to exacerbate household income differences. For example, divorces, marital separations, births out of wedlock, and the increasing age at first marriage have led to a shift away from married-couple households to single-parent families and nonfamily households. Since nonmarried-couple households tend to have lower income and income that are less equally distributed than other types of households (partly because of the likelihood of fewer earners in them), changes in household composition have been associated with growing income inequality.
— Source: The U.S. Census Bureau
Additional data regarding social class/socioeconomic status in the U.S. can be found through The U.S. Census Bureau and the Pew Research Center.
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AcknowledgmentThis guide is inspired by the LibGuides Open Review Discussion Sessions (LORDS) Project and University of Minnesota Libraries' Conducting Research Through an Anti-Racism Lens LibGuide.
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