To reach that lofty position, it helps greatly to have parents in jobs much more prestigious than a janitor’s. 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. Those who are employed in lower class occupations are often colloquially referred to as the working poor. The lower-middle class (also sometimes simply referred to as the middle class) consists of roughly one third of households—it is roughly twice as large as the upper-middle and upper classes. Coleman, R. P., & Rainwater, L. (1978). In addition to having autonomy in their work, above-average incomes, and advanced educations, the upper middle class also tends to be powerful; members are influential in setting trends and shaping public opinion. (2008). Two of the most common causes are low educational attainment and disabilities, the latter of which includes both physical and mental ailments that preclude educational or occupational success. Sociology by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. Social theorists who dispute the existence of social classes in the U.S. tend to argue that society is stratified along a continuous gradation, rather than into delineated categories. They include such occupations as lawyer, physician, dentist, engineer, professor, architect, civil service executive, and civilian contractor. Individuals in the lower-middle class tend to hold low status professional or white collar jobs, such as school teacher, nurse, or paralegal. Those in the working class are commonly employed in low-skilled occupations, including clerical and retail positions and blue collar or manual labor occupations. The super-rich, according to Beeghley, are those able to live off their wealth without depending on occupation-derived income. A number of things can cause an individual to become unemployed. Social stratification and inequality. This model has gained traction as a tool for thinking about social classes in America, but it does not fully account for variations in status based on non-economic factors, such as education and occupational prestige. The United States has a high level of income inequality, with a wide gap between the top and bottom brackets of earners. A team of sociologists recently posited that there are six social classes in America. Working-class families are far less likely than their wealthier counterparts to own their own homes or to send their children to college. The lower-middle class is among the largest social classes, rivaled only by the working class, and it is thought to be growing. Now you may be considered part of the Elite class. They thus do not fit neatly into either of Marx’s two major classes, the bourgeoisie or the proletariat. We will discuss the poor further when we focus later in this chapter on inequality and poverty in the United States. According to the rubric laid out by sociologist Max Weber, the upper-middle class consists of well-educated professionals with graduate degrees and comfortable incomes. 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. Post-1970, a higher proportion of the income of high-income taxpayers comes predominantly from employment compensation–60% of earners in the top 0.1% are executives, managers, supervisors, and financial professionals, and the five most common professions among the top 1% of earners are managers, physicians, administrators, lawyers, and financial specialists. These 15,000 families have been characterized as the “richest of the rich. social class in America in terms of social and cultural characteristics. The United States has some vertical social mobility, but not as much as several nations in Western Europe. 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. What is social class?Many sociologists — those who can see no further than the capitalist system — will tend to define class as a matter of income, as a way of categorising society by simply looking at what people earn, or a matter of status or how they are looked upon by society. Beeghley’s definition of the super-rich is congruent with the definition of upper class employed by most other sociologists. (2010). High income earners likely are substantially educated, have high- status occupations, and maintain powerful social networks. Moreover, members of the upper-middle class are generally more economically secure than their lower-middle class counterparts. 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.