A contemporary view of the American social class structure is presented in the text. Identify each of the major categories and supply a brief comment that characterizes each one.
America is one of the countries with a population that is not easy to classify. America’s population can be subdivided into sections depending on the amount of resources that they have. A sociologist by the name W. Lloyd Warner classified them into six. There are three major parts of the classification. These include the upper, middle and the lower class Americans.
Upper class Americans
These are the richest people in the country. They possibly control up to 70% of the wealth in the country. This section is divided into the upper-upper class, upper lower class and the upper middle class. Most of the people in this category are people who own established businesses that they inherited from their parents (Lloyd, 1941). They are also referred to as the capital base of the country and have a lot of influence on the type of decisions made in the country. The lower-upper class consists of new elites in the society that mainly consists of professionals. These are people who have made it to this level as a result of the proper education and research they have been involved in. They are known for specific ideologies they have come up with. The upper middle class also fall in this category. These are individual who are known to be college graduates and own a few investments. Compared to the lower-upper class, they do not have the ability to relate with the upper-upper class in the society.
Middle class
This group consists of middle class and the working class. This is the largest of all groups as it contains of the people who live the better parts of the town. They can access good food, security and shelter. Most of them earn their income by working in the investments created by those in the upper class. They constitute up to 70% of the total population of the people in America. The group consists of those who have white collar jobs and those with the blue collar jobs with the same amount of income (Lloyd, 1941). They live in under the same conditions as a result of the common income they have.
Lower class
This is the lowest of the classes in which Americans are classified. The group consists of upper-lower class which consists of those who are slightly above the poverty level. They can afford the basic things like food, shelter and clothing. The category also consists of the real-lower class. They are people who have no jobs, welfare and mainly involved in crimes. They cannot afford any decent life because they do not have the money to cater for the expenses (Lloyd, 1941).
Other sociologists have tried to come up with classifications but the bottom line is that they will fall under the ones discussed above. They form the general categories of people in America.
Works cited
Lloyd Warner. Social classification of Americans. New York publishers. 1941
