# How do you determine what socioeconomic "class" a person is in? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 13, 2004, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-determine-what-socioeconomic-class-a-person-is-in/269064 "2004-10-13T20:04:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2004, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-determine-what-socioeconomic-class-a-person-is-in/269064/1 "2004-10-13T20:04:12Z")
In another thread, it was asked what the difference between middle and upper class was with respect to tax brackets and income levels. Rather than hijack that thread, I am started a new one to discuss the following questions: -What defines what “class” a person belongs to? -How do you identify a persons class when you meet them? -How easy/difficult is it to move between classes? -What are some of the barriers to moving between classes? -Is it even relevant in American society? In other words, is there so much blending between classes and income brackets that it is essentially as irrelevant as the color of the shirt I put on this morning? I have my own thoughts on the matter but I would like to see how people respond first. I also hope BrainGlutton chooses to post his excerpt from \*Class: A Guide to the American Status System, by Paul Fussell \* again. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2004, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-determine-what-socioeconomic-class-a-person-is-in/269064/2 "2004-10-13T20:10:20Z")
The same Paul Fussell says that you can identify the classes by the types of hats they wear. I don’t wear hats, which puts me sqarely in the middle class, right above the “proles” (in Fussell’s terminology). ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2004, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-determine-what-socioeconomic-class-a-person-is-in/269064/3 "2004-10-13T20:41:35Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > The same Paul Fussell says that you can identify the classes by the types of hats they wear. I don’t wear hats, which puts me sqarely in the middle class, right above the “proles” (in Fussell’s terminology). Fussell also seemed to fail to realize that the Official Preppy Handbook is supposed to be satirical (I least I hope so…it’s pretty silly). ---
**Author:** ![eponymous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e0b2c6/32.png) [@eponymous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eponymous)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2004, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-determine-what-socioeconomic-class-a-person-is-in/269064/4 "2004-10-13T20:55:13Z")
Good question - Fussell’s book is definitely a fun read… > [@msmith537](#): > > What defines what “class” a person belongs to? I think this one is both easy and difficult at the same time. Easy in the sense that I think many people have a general idea of what distinguishes one class from another. In the US at least, money/wealth seems to be the set criteria most people use in differentiating one class from another. Difficult in the sense that (in the US) as one examines the issue more closely, it appears that money/wealth isn’t always a reliable indicator. So in understanding class more clearly one needs to incorporate other variables. > [@](#): > > -How do you identify a persons class when you meet them? I don’t think it’s a matter of making a judgement based on initial impressions (although it’s not to say that people don’t do so). See below > [@](#): > > -How easy/difficult is it to move between classes? Depends on a given society. In the US, class movement is relatively easy compared to other societies (comtemporary and historical). However, I believe Fussell makes a good point in his book that it is difficult to erase all elements of the class one is born and rasied in. In other words, if I was raised in a lower middle-class background and suddenly found myself the winner of the Powerball Lottery, my financial status would push me into the higher classes (economically). However, I would still probably continue (for a while at least) to keep many of the values/beliefs/attitudes of the lower middle class. This is relevant because I think many people base their impressions on whether someone is of their class or not by the values/beliefs/attitudes they share (or don’t share). I may have hit the lottery, but if I start “acting differently” then 1) those in my class - lower middle class - may accuse me of “putting on airs” and 2) those in the upper classes may deride me as “nouveau riche”. > [@](#): > > -What are some of the barriers to moving between classes? See above comments. In the US, class movement is relatively easy, but due to the values/beliefs/attitudes one has been raised in often times makes it difficult for people to be accepted into the other class. This can be overcome somewhat (but not entirely) as long as one gives the _appearance_ of belonging. Which might help explain the popularity of President Bush with portions of the electorate (versus why Kerry might not be popular with certain portions of the electorate). > [@](#): > > -Is it even relevant in American society? In other words, is there so much blending between classes and income brackets that it is essentially as irrelevant as the color of the shirt I put on this morning? Still relevant, although I think less so than in the past (from a historical perspective). However, this trend is only relevant if the US maintains a fairly large middle class with the general trend of society geared towards the middle class (that is, the values/belifs/attitudes of the middle class). If there is a noticeable shift away from the values/belifs/attitudes of the middle-class, then I think class distinctions will become more prominent. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2004, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-determine-what-socioeconomic-class-a-person-is-in/269064/5 "2004-10-13T21:43:16Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > I also hope BrainGlutton chooses to post his excerpt from \*Class: A Guide to the American Status System, by Paul Fussell \* again. Glad to oblige. Fussell’s book is more humor than social science, but still insightful – I think. Judge for yourself. The following is from _Class: A Guide to the American Status System,_ by Paul Fussell (New York: Summit Books, 1983), pp. 27-50: > [@](#): > > My researches have persuaded me that there are nine classes in this country, as follows: > > ## Top out-of-sight Upper Upper middle > > ## Middle High proletarian Mid-proletarian Low proletarian > > Destitute > Bottom out-of-sight > > One thing to get clear at the outset is this: it’s not riches alone that define these clases. . . . “Economically, no doubt, there are only two classes, the rich and the poor,” says George Orwell, “but socially there is a whole hierarchy of classes, and the manners and traditions learned by each class in childhood are not only very different but – this is the essential point – generally persist from birth to death. . . . It is . . . very difficult to escape, culturally, from the class into which you have been born.” When John Fitzgerald Kennedy, watching Richard Nixon on television, turned to his friends and, horror-struck, said, “The guy has no class,” he was not talking about money. > > * * * > > Not that the three classes at the top don’t have money. The point is that money alone doesn’t define them, for the way they have their money is largely what matters. . . . The main thing distinguishing the top three classes from each other is the amount of money inherited in relation to the amount currently earned. The top-out-of-sight class (Rockefellers, Pres, DuPonts, Mellons, Fords, Vanderbilts) lives on inherited capital entirely. . . . > > “When I think of a really rich man,” says a Boston blue-collar, “I think of one of those estates where you can’t see the house from the road.” Hence the name of the top class, which could just as well be called “the class in hiding.” Their houses are never seen from the street or road. They like to hide away deep in the hills or way off on Greek or Caribbean islands (which they tend to own), safe, for the moment, from envy and its ultimate attendants, confiscatory taxation and finally expropriation. . . . > > * * * > > The next class down, the upper class, differs from the top-out-of-sight class in two main ways. First, although it inherits a lot of its money, it earns quite a bit too, usually from some attractive, if slight, work, without which it would feel bored and even ashamed. It’s likely to make its money by controlling banks and the more historic corporations, think tanks, and foundations, and to busy itself with things like the older universities, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Foreign Policy Association, the Committee for Economic Development, and the like, together with the executive branch of the federal government, and often the Senate. . . . And secondly, unlike the top-out-of-sights, the upper class is visible, often ostentatiously so. . . . When you pass a house with a would-be impressive facade visible from the street or highway, you know it’s occupied by a member of the upper class. . . . > > * * * > > We now come to the upper-middle class. It may possess virtually as much as the two classes above it. The difference is that it has earned most of it, in law, medicine, oil, shipping, real estate, or even the more honorific kinds of trade, like buying and selling works of art. Although they may enjoy some inherited money and use inherited “things” (silver, Oriental rugs), the upper-middles suffer from a bourgeois sense of shame, a conviction that to live on the earnings of others, even forebears, is not nice. > > Caste marks of the upper-middles would include living in a house with more rooms than you need, except perhaps when a lot of “overnight guests” are present to help you imitate upper-class style. . . . This class is also the most “role-reversed” of all: men think nothing of cooking and doing housework, women of working out of the house in journalism, theater, or real estate. (If the wife stays home all the time, the family’s middle-class only.) Upper-middles like to show off their costly educations by naming their cats Spinoza, Clytemnestra, and Candide, which means, as you’ll have inferred already, that it’s in large part the class depicted by Lisa Birnbach and others’ _Official Preppy Handbook,_ that significantly popular artifact of 1980. > > * * * > > . . . The middle class is distinguishable more by its earnestness and psychic insecurity than by its middle income. I have known some very rich people who remain stubbornly middle-class, which is to say they remain terrified at what others think of them, and to avoid criticism are obsessed with doing everything right. . . . > > “Status panic”: that’s the affliction of the middle class, according to C. Wright Mills, author of _White Collar_ (1951) and _The Power Elite_ (1956). Hence the middles’ need to accumulate credit cards and take in _The New Yorker,_ which it imagines registers upper-middle taste. . . . > > If the audience for that sort of thing used to seem the most deeply rooted in time and place, today it seems the class that’s the most rootless. Members of the middle class are not only the sort of people who buy their own heirlooms, silver, etc. They’re also the people who do most of the moving long-distance (generally to very unstylish places), commanded every few years to pull up stakes by the corporations they’re in bondage to. They are the geologist employed by the oil company, the computer programmer, the aeronautical engineer, the salesman assigned to a new territory, and the “marketing” (formerly sales) manager deputed to keep an eye on him. . . . IBM and DuPont hire these people from second-rate colleges and teach them that they are nothing if not members of the team. Virtually no latitude is permitted to individuality or the milder forms of eccentricity, and these employees soon learn to avoid all ideological statements. . . . Terrified of losing their jobs, these people grow passive, their humanity diminished as they perceive themselves mere parts of an infinitely larger structure. Interchangeable parts, too. “The training makes our men interchangeable,” an IBM executive was once heard to say. > > * * * > > . . . Oddity, introversion, and love of privacy are the big enemies, a total reversal of the values of the secure upper orders. Among the middles there’s a convention that erecting a fence or even a tall hedge is an affront. And there’s also a convention that you may drop in on neighbors and friends without a telephone inquiry first. . . . > > * * * > > . . . Proceeding downward, we would normally expect to meet next the lower-middle class. But it doesn’t exist as such any longer, having been pauperized by the inflation of the 1960s and 1970s and transformed into the high-proletarian class. What’s the difference? A further lack of freedom and self-respect. Our former lower-middle class, the new high proles, now head “the masses,” and even if they are positioned at the top of the proletarian classes, still they are identifiable as people things are done to. They are in bondage – to monetary policy, rip-off advertising, crazes and delusions, mass low culture, fast food, consumer schlock. Back in the 1940s there was still a real lower-middle class in this country, whose solid high-school education and addiction to “saving” and “planning” maintained it in a position – often precarious, to be sure – above the working class. . . . These former low-white-collar people are now simply working machines, and the wife usually works as well as the husband. > > The kind of work performed and the sort of anxiety that besets one as a result of work are ways to divide the working class into its three strata. The high proles are the skilled workers, crafstmen, like printers. The mid-proles are operators, like Ralph Kramden, the bus driver. The low proles are unskilled labor, like longshoremen. The special anxiety of high proles is fear about loss or reduction of status: you’re proud to be a master carpenter, and you want the world to understand clearly the difference between you and a laborer. The special anxiety of the mid-proles is fear of losing the job. And of the low proles, the gnawing perception that you’re probably never going to make enough or earn enough freedom to have and do the things you want. > > * * * > > But high proles are quite smart, or at least shrewd. Because often their work is not closely supervised, they have pride and a conviction of independence, and they feel some contempt for those who have not made it as far as they have. The are, as the sociologist E. E. LeMasters calls them and titles his book, _Blue-Collar Aristocrats_ (1975), and their disdain for the middle class is like the aristocrat’s from the other direction. . . . Like other aristocrats, says LeMasters, these “have gone to the top of their social world and need not expend time or energy on ‘social climbing.’” . . . > > Since they’re not consumed with worry about choosing the correct status emblems, these people can be remarkably relaxed and unself-conscious. They can do, say, wear, and look like pretty much anything they want without undue feelings of shame, which belong to their betters, the middle class, shame being largely a bourgeois feeling. . . . > > * * * > > High proles are nice. It’s down among the mid- and low proles that features some might find offensive begin to show themselves. These are people who feel bitter about their work, often because they are closely supervised and regulated and generally treated like wayward children. . . . Andrew Levinson, author of _The Working-Class Majority_ (1974), invites us to imagine what it would be like to be under the constant eye of a foreman, “a figure who has absolutely no counterpart in middle-class society. Salaried professionals often do have people above them, but it is impossible to imagine professors or executives being required to bring a doctor’s note if they are absent a day or having to justify the number of trips they take to the bathroom.” . . . > > The degree of supervision, indeed, is often a more eloquent class indicator than mere income, which suggests that the whole class system is more a recognition of the value of freedom than a proclamation of the value of sheer cash. . . . One is a mid- or low prole if one’s servitude is constantly emphasized. Occupational class depends largely on doing work for which the consquences of error or failure are distant or remote, or better, invisible, rather than immediately apparent to a superior and thus instantly humiliating to the performer. > > Constantly demeaned at work, the lower sorts of proles suffer from poor morale. As one woman worker says, “Most of us . . . have jobs that are too small for our spirits.” > > * * * > > At the bottom of the working class, the low prole is identifiable by the gross uncertainty of his employment. This class would include illegal aliens like Mexican fruit pickers as well as other migrant workers. Social isolation is the norm here, and what Hoggart says of the lower working class in Britain applies elsewhere as well: “Socially . . . each day and each week is almost unplanned. There is no diary, no book of engagements, and few letters are sent or received.” Remoteness and isolation, as in the valleys of Appalachia, are characteristics, and down here we find people who, trained for nothing, are likely out of sheer despair to join the Army. > > Still, they’re better off than the destitute, who never have even seasonal work and who live wholly on welfare. They differ from the bottom-out-of-sights less because they’re much better off than because they’re more visible, in the form of Bowery bums, bag ladies, people who stand in public places lecturing and delivering harangues about their grievances, people who drink out of paper bags, people whose need for some recognition impels them to “act” in front of audiences in the street. When delinquency and distress grow desperate, you sink into the bottom-out-of-sight class, staying all day in your welfare room or contriving to get taken into an institution, whether charitable or correctional doesn’t matter much. In the last chapter, Fussell identifies a tenth class, a “Class X” of declassed intellectuals and bohemians. Even this fine-grained analysis might be too simplistic. For one thing, it ignores divisions between ethnic groups. A working-class black and a working-class white might work in similar occupations for similar incomes; but they grow up in different social environments, speak different dialects, attend different churches, listen to different music, socialize with circles of friends almost entirely of their own color, and almost certainly will marry (or, at any rate, reproduce) within their own race. The divisions are much less sharp than they were 20 years ago. (I know white kids who listen to rap and hip-hop, and who call each other “nigger” and “dog” as terms of affection, and whose closest friends and romantic interests are as likely to be black as white.) But they’re still there. Are the white prole and the black prole in the same “class”? In 10 or 20 years, maybe; today, no, IMO. They both occupy the same horizontal layer of the social pyramid but there is a vertical line of separation between them. Perhaps a better question to ask is whether Fussell’s analysis is dated. In noting the death of the American lower middle class due to economic forces in the 1960s and '70s, Fussell acknowledged a society’s class structure can change significantly in a short period of time. And his book dates from 1983. How well does it describe the America of 2004? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2004, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-determine-what-socioeconomic-class-a-person-is-in/269064/6 "2004-10-13T21:48:37Z")
Another insightful analysis – albeit one limited to the upper strata – is provided by Michael Lind in _The Next American Nation_ (New York: Free Press Paperbacks, 1996), pp. 141-145: > [@](#): > > Understanding the white overclass requires revising the most common misconceptions about class. The discussion of social class has been confused for generations by Marxist thinkers, who made the mistake of completely identifying class with economic function. Like the Marxists, old-fashioned American liberal pluralists tend to misunderstand class. What they refer to as class is typically not a social class at all, but a mere occupational or income category, such as service-sector workers or millionaires. Meanwhile, the New Left which came to prominence in the sixties has tended to drop the idea of class altogether, in favor of race and gender. . . . In recent years, conservative ideologues have added further confusion by defining political factions and lifestyle subcultures as classes. . . . > > In order to think about class in twenty-first century America, we must first clear our minds of these Marxist, liberal, New Left, and conservative definitions of class, and return to the older notion of class found in classical and European political thought from Aristotle to Montesquieu. > > A class is a group of families, united by intermarriage and a common subculture, whose members tend to predominate in certain professions and political offices, generation after generation. Note that the class – the group of similar families – has an existence independent of the offices which its members tend to hold. Indeed, we cannot talk intelligently about class unless we make a distinction between a social class and a mere institutional elite. . . . Indeed, we cannot talk intelligently about class unless we make a distinction between a social class and a mere institutional elite. Those who talk about “the political class” or, with C. Wright Mills, about “the power elite,” are confusing two very different things. Every modern society, even the most perfectly egalitarian, will have an institutional elite – top civilian politicians, military officers, judges, diplomats, financial and industrial executives, publishers, editors and leading intellectuals, clerical leaders, and so on. The subject of class is raised only when you examine the social origins of the particular individuals who hold office in the institutional elite or elites. Learning the organization of judicial offices in a country tells you nothing about class. However, if you find out that most of the judges tend to come from old-money families in a particular region of that country, and that most attended one of half a dozen schools, then you have learned something important about that country’s class system. > > The United States at the end of the twentieth century has both an institutional elite and a dominant social class. The institutional elite is composed of upper-level officials in the federal and state governments, plus executives and professionals in the concentrated private sector and foundation and university executives (low-level government officials and small business owners are not part of the institutional elite). Almost all of the members of the American institutional elite also happen to be members of a single social class: the white overclass. To put it another way, the labor pool from which most elite positions are filled is the white overclass. The overlap is not complete. Though most members of the institutional elite belong to the white overclass, most members of the white overclass are not part of the institutional elite (since the overclass greatly outnumbers the elite); and – though this is uncommon – a person can become a high-ranking politician, military officer, judge, CEO, foundation president, or university president in the United States without having been born into the white overclass. It is possible to imagine a United States in which most members of the institutional elite did not have similar class origins. But that is not the country in which we live. > > . . . The white overclass is the child of the former Northeastern Protestant establishment, produced by marriage (not only figurative but literal) with the upwardly mobile descendants of turn-of-the-century European immigrants and white Southerners and Westerners. Unlike the Northeastern establishment . . . this relatively new and still evolving political and social oligarchy is not identified with any particular region of the country (though it is concentrated in East and West Coast metropolitan regions). Nor does the white overclass dominate other sections through local, surrogate establishments, as the Northeastern establishment once did. Rather, overclass Americans are found in the higher suburbs of every major metropolitan area, North and South, coastal and inland. Unlike the sectional elites of the past, members of the white overclass are not even identified with the regions in which they happen (temporarily) to live. The white overclass, homogeneous and nomadic, is the first truly national upper class in American history. > > The white overclass is the product, not merely of the amalgamation of Anglo- and Euro-Americans, but of the fusion of the rentier and managerial-professional classes. This blurring of the upper and upper-middle strata is a relatively new development in the United States. In earlier generations, there were distinct landowning and rentier classes, with their own lifestyles and institutions – cotillions, seasons spent in the country, and the like. The elaborate rituals that governed upper-class life, such as dressing for dinner, were designed to conspicuously display wealth, including a wealth of leisure time. That was a long time ago. There is a class, or rather a category, of the clebrity rich, and there are still pockets of old-fashioned rentiers in the U.S. – in Virginia, there are still planters who do not work and who hunt foxes with hounds – but these subcultures are detached from the summits of power. Members of the upper class who want to make a mark in the world tend to adopt the style of life and dress and speech of the managerial-professional elite. Even though they do not have to, most members of the small hereditary upper class go to college and get executive or professional jobs, and work, or at least pretend to. Instead of serving as a model for well-to-do executives and lawyers and investment bankers, the hereditary segment of the American overclass conforms to the segment immediately below it, the credentialed upper middle class. > > . . . The composition of student bodies at Ivy League schools is a good surrogate for the composition of the white overclass. If you factor out black and Hispanic students admitted under affirmative action programs, you ar lef with a student body that is disproportionately of British or German-Scandinavian Protestant and European Jewish descent. There are relatively few evangelical Protestants and Catholics in the overclass, despite their significant numbers in the general population. If you are Episcopalian or Jewish, have a graduate or professional degree from an expensive university, work in a large downtown office building in an East or West Coast metropolis, watch MacNeil/Lehrer on PBS, and are saving for a vacation in London or Paris, you are a card-carrying member of the white overclass, even if your salary is not very impressive. If you are Methodist, Baptist or Catholic, have a B.A. from a state university, work in or for a small business or for a career government service, watch the Nashville Network on cable, and are saving for a vacation in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Branson, Missouri, or Orlando, Florida (Disneyworld), you are probably not a member of the white overclass – no matter how much money you make. > > Although there are residual religious and ethnic differences among members of the white overclass, these are minor compared to what they have in common. There is, for example, a common white overclass accent, which is more or less identical in corporate boardrooms from one end of the continent to another – the “NBC standard,” which is the equivalent of BBC English or Britain’s Received Pronunciation (RP). As formerly distinct local elites have fused into a single national ruling class equally at home in New York and Texas and California, this accent has become the badge of elite status. In order to advance in overclass circles in America, a white American has to suppress any regional or ethnic dialect, whether it be a Southern drawl or a Boston honk or Brooklynese, and learn to speak this flat, clipped, rather nasal version of English. . . . > > . . . The overclass eats pate and imported cheeses; the middle class eats peanut butter and Velveeta. The overclass sips wine; the middle class drinks beer. The overclass plays squash and tennis; the middle class plays pool and bowls (both golf, but the middle class does so at second-tier country clubs and public courses). The overclass jogs; the middle class does not. . . . These are cliches, but they are a better guide to the real class structure in the United States than income categories in the census or pseudoscientific sociological measures like the SES (socioeconomic survey). All of the above is about the **white** overclass. In Lind’s analysis there is also a black overclass and a Hispanic overclass, but they are socially separate and distinct groups, with only limited intermarriage with the white overclass. They lack the white overclass’s financial independence, and mostly work in civil service jobs and corporate middle management. In fact they are salaried dependents of the white overclass. (Think Clarence Thomas.) ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2004, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-determine-what-socioeconomic-class-a-person-is-in/269064/7 "2004-10-13T22:09:57Z")
> [@](#): > > What defines what “class” a person belongs to? Socio-economics I’d guess…that and perhaps education and upbringing. > [@](#): > > How do you identify a persons class when you meet them? Probably by subconscious cue’s. The way they are dressed, speech and mannerisms, attitudes and positions on things, etc. It pigeonholes people into a ‘slot’ that I suppose could be broadly defined as ‘class’. > [@](#): > > How easy/difficult is it to move between classes? In the US? I think it’s pretty easy to move between the ‘classes’, especially if we define them more broadly than just economic. Even economic it’s pretty easy to move between classes in the US. It varies in other countries of course. It was damn hard to move between the more ridged ‘class’ structure in Mexico for my family (and still is for the family I still have living there)…it wasn’t impossible, just more difficult. > [@](#): > > Is it even relevant in American society? In other words, is there so much blending between classes and income brackets that it is essentially as irrelevant as the color of the shirt I put on this morning? Its mostly irrelevant in the US today…at least as I define ‘class’…because the term ‘class’ is basically meaningless. Class meant something in earlier cultures when you had a rigid caste system in place, or when movement between classes was severely restricted (or even completely restricted). When education wasn’t available at all for the lower ‘classes’ there was a huge gap. Now, there is certainly a monetary gap…but a poor Hispanic can get essentially the same education as a rich white. He can learn the same things about economics, politics, language, engineering, etc. Just look at people of the same economic level…they differ radically within their own ‘class’ level. A Hispanic on the west coast has radically different attitudes than a black making the same amount on the east coast…or a white making the same amount in the south. Hell, two Hispanic’s making the same amount differ if one lives in the South West and one lives in the North East. ‘Class’, as far as in America, is IMO basically a meaningless term…just like ‘race’ is. It’s a hold over (in the US) from earlier times. There ARE no real ‘races’…and in the US there really isn’t a homogenous ‘class’. Wealthy people on the East Coast are a hell of a lot different in their attitudes, politics, priorities, etc, than a wealthy person in the South West, the North West, the West Coast, etc. Hell, even on the East Coast you have wealthy liberals and wealthy conservatives…and they are pretty radically different in more ways than just their politics. -XT ---
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2004, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-determine-what-socioeconomic-class-a-person-is-in/269064/8 "2004-10-13T22:15:48Z")
The easiest way to determine an individual’s social class is by rolling 2d10: 01-10 Lower Lower Class 11-20 Middle Lower Class 21-30 Upper Lower Class 31-45 Lower Middle Class 46-70 Middle Middle Class 71-85 Upper Middle Class 86-95 Lower Upper Class 96-99 Middle Upper Class 00 Upper Upper Class Piece of cake! ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2004, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-determine-what-socioeconomic-class-a-person-is-in/269064/9 "2004-10-13T22:17:15Z")
_If it wasn’t for low class, I wouldn’t have no class at all…_ I just look at the type of vehicle the person drives. That tells me everything I need to know. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2004, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-determine-what-socioeconomic-class-a-person-is-in/269064/10 "2004-10-13T22:19:17Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > Now, there is certainly a monetary gap…but a poor Hispanic can get essentially the same education as a rich white. 😛😛😛😛😛😛😛😛😛😛 No, he can’t, **x,** not without getting a whole lot of rare lucky breaks. And if he does get the same education, he still can’t do all the same things with it a rich white can. Connections and the “old boy network” still count for a lot, And white skin privilege still exists. A white hillbilly who gets a good education, works hard, gets rich, and moves into an expensive condo complex is accepted by his new neighbors as one of them. A black from the projects who does the same is still just a nigger in a Jaguar. That’s how it is. For now. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2004, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-determine-what-socioeconomic-class-a-person-is-in/269064/11 "2004-10-13T22:22:45Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > I just look at the type of vehicle the person drives. That tells me everything I need to know. 2000 Nissan Maxima SE. I await judgement with trepidation :D. - Tamerlane ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2004, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-determine-what-socioeconomic-class-a-person-is-in/269064/12 "2004-10-13T22:25:48Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > 2000 Nissan Maxima SE. > > I await judgement with trepidation :D. > > - Tamerlane I have to actually see it, both the exterior and interior, to make the decision. This is a science, not just some snap judgement! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2004, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-determine-what-socioeconomic-class-a-person-is-in/269064/13 "2004-10-13T22:47:23Z")
**msmith:** _-How easy/difficult is it to move between classes? -What are some of the barriers to moving between classes?_ **xt:** \* Even economic it’s pretty easy to move between classes in the US.\* Insofar as “class” means “income level” (and other people have done a good job of pointing out some of the differences between those categories), the answer seems to be that it’s easier to move between classes in the US than in many other places, but it’s harder than it used to be. An [article](http://reclaimdemocracy.org/weekly_2003/american_dream_death.html) in _Business Week_ in 2003 discussed some of the issues of America’s declining income mobility: > [@](#): > > […] Many middle-income and high-skilled employees face fewer opportunities, too, as companies shift work to subcontractors and temp agencies and move white-collar jobs to China and India. > > The result has been an erosion of one of America’s most cherished values: giving its people the ability to move up the economic ladder over their lifetimes. Historically, most Americans, even low-skilled ones, were able to find poorly paid janitorial or factory jobs, then gradually climb into the middle class as they gained experience and moved up the wage curve. But the number of workers progressing upward began to slip in the 1970s, when the post-World War II productivity boom ran out of steam. Upward mobility diminished even more in the 1980s as globalization and technology slammed blue-collar wages. > > Many experts expected the trend to reverse as productivity rebounded during the heated economy of the 1990s. Certainly, there were plenty of gains. […] But new research suggests that, surprisingly, the best economy in 30 years did little to get America’s vaunted upward mobility back on track. […] conventional companies were cutting the middle out of career ladders, leaving fewer people able to better their economic position over the decade. > > During the 1990s, relative mobility – that is, the share of Americans changing income quintiles in any direction, up or down – slipped by two percentage points […] While two points may not sound like much, it’s bad news given how much progress might have been made amid explosive growth. Essentially, says University of Chicago economics professor and Nobel laureate James J. Heckman, “the big finding in recent years is that the notion of America being a highly mobile society isn’t as true as it used to be.” […] > > For mobility to increase in relative terms, which is the standard way economists measure it, someone has to move down the pecking order to make room for another to move up. But the Boston Fed study found less movement in both directions. Some 40% of families didn’t change income brackets over the decade, vs. 37% in the 1980s and 36% in the 1970s, according to the authors’ analysis of annual longitudinal surveys by the University of Michigan. > > The changing dynamic of the U.S. economy clearly has the most impact on those at the bottom. Some 49% of families who started the 1970s in poverty were still stuck there at the end of that decade, the Boston Fed study found. During the 1990s, the figure had jumped to 53%, even after accounting for two-earner families. A key reason lies with the creation of millions of jobs that pay less than a poverty-line wage of $8.70 an hour […] If income mobility barriers continue to grow more rigid, we can probably expect to see other types of “class distinctions” tighten up too. One of the things that keeps class distinctions loose is high intergenerational class mobility: if your grandfather lived in a small house in a poor quarter of town and you visited him there a lot and hung out at the corner store with him and his friends, then even if you grow up to be a limo-riding CEO, you probably will remain comfortable with lower-class environments. If, on the other hand, everybody in your family was in the limo-riding CEO class, you’ll have a harder time understanding how the other half lives. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2004, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-determine-what-socioeconomic-class-a-person-is-in/269064/14 "2004-10-13T23:00:19Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > If you are Episcopalian or Jewish, have a graduate or professional degree from an expensive university, work in a large downtown office building in an East or West Coast metropolis, watch MacNeil/Lehrer on PBS, and are saving for a vacation in London or Paris, you are a card-carrying member of the white overclass, even if your salary is not very impressive. Whew! For awhile I thought I was just common upper-middle class! I would say that the most visible differences in class can be seen in higher education. For one, it is the oldest point in most peoples life where they have not been forced to make their own way in the world yet, so they are still very much defined by how they were raised. Secondly, education itself somewhat defines a persons “class”. Thirdly, for many people, it is the first time they have been forced to mingle with people of different backgrounds. One thing I noticed in college was how quickly people who grew up in the same class identified each other, even though on the surface, there is very little outward difference in appearance (in all fairness, my school was rather homogenius anyway with most of the student body ranging from middle class to wealthy). “Oh we went to the same summer camp in Massachusettes”, “You went to Choate? Yeah we played you in lacross.”, “Your family has a house in Spring Lake? Sorry East Hampton.” Probably the biggest barrier between classes is attitude toward wealth and prosperity. Lower classes will wear shirts with a giant POLO logo in 6 inch letters across the back like a NASCAR sponser while upper classes wear the more subdued classic horse logo on the breast pocket. My girlfriend went to college a few miles away from my school. While similar, her school was definitely skewed more to the Middle Class. The student body, while coming from families with similar incomes, tended to travel shorter distances to go to school there and tended to stay closer upon graduating. They viewed people from my school as a bunch of rich arrogant alchoholic druggies like characters out of a Bret Easton Ellis book or something. Of course we had a lot of them too. On the other hand, my school was not in the same class as the Harvards and Princetons of the world. As for how much class matters, probably not that much. My girlfriends family runs the entire specrum of the socioecomic latter. Her parents aren’t very wealthy and live in a rural area while her cousin is part owner of a Major League baseball team. And she has aunts and uncles and cousins all in between -lawyers, high school soccer coaches, what have you. Anyhow I have to go eat. More thoughts later ---
**Author:** ![Rashak\_Mani](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ea666f/32.png) [@Rashak\_Mani](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rashak_Mani)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2004, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-determine-what-socioeconomic-class-a-person-is-in/269064/15 "2004-10-14T04:49:16Z")
hhmmm… lets go to the nitty gritty of class discrimination: 1st - Check out the shoes. Bad shoes are a give away. 2nd - Overall clothes check. Good quality and good taste ? Belts especially. 3rd - Wrist watch… a good and fancy watch might mean some economic power. Too flashy might mean a “noveau riche”. 4th - Teeth. More money means better dentist work and getting teeth fixed. 5th - Overall demeanor and posture. 6th Now depending on the country you’d check out skin color… and during conversation cultural references and general culture, and age. I’m not going to be politically correct about this topic. We all “measure” people all the time. Even if I don’t want to label someone… I see the give away details that mark someone as lower middle class in Brazil quite easily for example. I also figure out when someone is rich… but they weren’t born so. Education and culture also determine “class” a lot. You’d be surprised how people determine “class” during conversation. The higher the class… the more educated you might have to be… and the interests might be different too. I’ve never played golf… so I doubt I’d be able to mingle with the CEO crowd for example. I couldn’t keep up with a much younger group either talking about computer games. Music tastes too point out class. University education in Brazil isn’t as widespread as in the US for example… and interest in politics isn’t that common outside of these circles. Getting a higher education in Brazil means being in the 3-4% group. ---
**Author:** ![Waccoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Waccoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Waccoe)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2004, 9:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-determine-what-socioeconomic-class-a-person-is-in/269064/16 "2004-10-14T09:30:27Z")
To answer the question in a market research context, there is a standard socio-economic classification system, also known as social grade. In Britain, the standard classification system is A, B, C1, C2, D, E - all a bit Brave New World. Essentially, an individual is graded according to his/ her income band and profession (or the houshold’s income and main breadwinner’s profession). As a bishop, or bishop’s spouse, you get A status even if you have no or little income. I don’t know if the system is exactly the same in the US. However, researchers on both sides of the Atlantic often look at data analysed by education level and pure income group as well as this socio-economic dimension. Another system used by marketers is entirely based on neighbourhood. These systems were developed because the six-way social grade system was felt to be too crude, and because they are suited to direct mail campaigns. All the neighbourhoods in a country are classified into clusters - 36 in the system I have seen. One example of a cluster might be inner city/ high density housing/ middle income/ small households/ high proportion of retired people. However, the distinction between old money and new money is normally overlooked in these systems. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2004, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-determine-what-socioeconomic-class-a-person-is-in/269064/17 "2004-10-14T13:08:11Z")
I find class differences to be a fascinating subject: here in NE, we have a very entrenched class of “Old Mone” people. These folks have been rich so long that they have no need to display their affluence. They live in drafty old houses, which are usually decaying. They also dress conservatively, and drive older american cars (no $300,000- Maybach sedans for them). They send their kids to prep schools, and prefer tastless, mushy kinds of food (like brown bread and baked beans). And, they are exceedingly cheap…one old Bostonian family lady was once complemented on her choice of hats…she was asked where she bought them. To this she replied: “we don’t buy them, we have them”! ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2004, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-determine-what-socioeconomic-class-a-person-is-in/269064/18 "2004-10-14T13:43:44Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > I find class differences to be a fascinating subject: here in NE, we have a very entrenched class of “Old Mone” people. These folks have been rich so long that they have no need to display their affluence. They live in drafty old houses, which are usually decaying. They also dress conservatively, and drive older american cars (no $300,000- Maybach sedans for them). They send their kids to prep schools, and prefer tastless, mushy kinds of food (like brown bread and baked beans). > And, they are exceedingly cheap…one old Bostonian family lady was once complemented on her choice of hats…she was asked where she bought them. To this she replied: “we don’t buy them, we have them”! I’m glad you brought this up. Fussell discusses this very aspect, describing how the members of the “top-out-of-sight” class drive 20-year-old beater Plymouths and Chevrolets. Again, however, this betrays a strong Northeastern provincialism; you would definitely not see the same sort of people driving the same sort of cars in L.A. Though it’s also arguable that you couldn’t really find the same sort of people in L.A. by definition. Be that as it may, I love Fussell’s book and have read my copy to pieces. (Interestingly, for those familiar with the book, if you don’t know what Dr. Fussell looks like…he looks very much llike his own classic “prole”, if you look at the side-by-side drawing of a coarse-looking prole next to an equally exaggeratedly effete “aristocrat”.) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2004, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-determine-what-socioeconomic-class-a-person-is-in/269064/19 "2004-10-14T15:46:55Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > And, they are exceedingly cheap…one old Bostonian family lady was once complemented on her choice of hats…she was asked where she bought them. To this she replied: “we don’t buy them, we have them”! I’ve heard of a classic NE proverb: “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without!” ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2004, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-determine-what-socioeconomic-class-a-person-is-in/269064/20 "2004-10-14T15:49:47Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > If income mobility barriers continue to grow more rigid, we can probably expect to see other types of “class distinctions” tighten up too. One of the things that keeps class distinctions loose is high intergenerational class mobility: if your grandfather lived in a small house in a poor quarter of town and you visited him there a lot and hung out at the corner store with him and his friends, then even if you grow up to be a limo-riding CEO, you probably will remain comfortable with lower-class environments. If, on the other hand, everybody in your family was in the limo-riding CEO class, you’ll have a harder time understanding how the other half lives. One point Lind made was that the feminist revolution has had the unexpected effect of making social mobility between generations more difficult. In the '50s, a male doctor might marry his nurse, a male lawyer might marry his secretary – who might well be a woman of humbler social origin than himself. Nowadays we have “assortative mating” – a male doctor is likelier to marry a female doctor, a male lawyer a female lawyer, etc. In terms of gender equity this is a good thing, but it tends to freeze class lines. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-determine-what-socioeconomic-class-a-person-is-in/269064.md?page=2)