class / social class
Last updatedWhat to know
Social class refers to categories or hierarchies used to describe an individual’s economic placement within broader society, often broken down as lower, middle, and upper. The rationale for these divisions varies widely by field and ideology, and should be specified whenever possible.
Terms like lower, middle, and upper class offer different connotations to different people, and class can be defined in myriad ways (education, income, occupation, family size, etc.). “Lower class,” for example, might be considered more pejorative than “working class” or “blue-collar” because of the hierarchy that it implies. Defining terms like “upper middle class” can be helpful because they are more nebulous and subjective. Certain factors, like income, vary widely across the country — a family income of, say, $50,000 would be comfortable in many rural regions but perhaps insufficient for higher-cost-of-living areas and cities. Pew offers one measure for noting an individual’s class standing.
Given that class designations are defined in so many ways, and could be offensive as a descriptor to some, using terms like low-, middle-, and high-income and explaining how those brackets are being defined may be helpful for clarity.
Additional resources
- Lower Income or Lower Class: What Matters for Social Mobility? (Brookings Institution)
- What Determines How Americans Perceive Their Social Class? (Gallup)
- The dangerous separation of the American upper middle class (Brookings Institution)
- Measuring Socioeconomic Status and Subjective Social Status (American Psychological Association)
- Are you in the American middle class? Find out with our income calculator (Pew Research Center)
Summary
Social class refers to categories or hierarchies used to describe an individual’s economic placement within broader society, often broken down as lower, middle, and upper. Terms like lower, middle, and upper class offer different connotations to different people, and class can be defined in myriad ways (education, income, occupation, family size, etc.). Using terms like low-, middle-, and high-income and explaining how those brackets are being defined may be helpful for clarity.