{"id":51045,"date":"2012-09-17T11:01:17","date_gmt":"2012-09-17T16:01:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.lclark.edu\/hart-landsberg\/?p=1103"},"modified":"2012-09-15T00:41:54","modified_gmt":"2012-09-15T05:41:54","slug":"the-continuing-relevance-of-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/09\/17\/the-continuing-relevance-of-class\/","title":{"rendered":"The Continuing Relevance of Class"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Cross-posted at <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.lclark.edu\/hart-landsberg\/2012\/09\/14\/the-continuing-relevance-of-class\/\" target=\"_blank\">Reports from the Economic Front<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Politicians always seem to be talking about the middle class. \u00a0They need some new focus groups. \u00a0According to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pewsocialtrends.org\/2012\/09\/10\/a-third-of-americans-now-say-they-are-in-the-lower-classes\/\">Pew Research Center<\/a>, over the past four years the percentage of adult Americans that say they are in the lower class has risen significantly, from a quarter to almost\u00a0one-third (see chart below).<\/p>\n<p>Pew also found that\u00a0the demographic profile of the self-defined lower class has also changed.\u00a0 Young people, according to Pew, \u201care disproportionately swelling the ranks of the self-defined lower classes.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 More specifically some 40% of those between 18 to 29 years of age now identify as\u00a0being in the lower classs compared to only 25% in 2008.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.lclark.edu\/hart-landsberg\/2012\/09\/14\/the-continuing-relevance-of-class\/09-10-12-lower-class-01\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-1104\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"09-10-12-Lower-Class-01\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.lclark.edu\/hart-landsberg\/files\/2012\/09\/09-10-12-Lower-Class-01.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"339\" height=\"650\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Strikingly, the percentage of whites and blacks that see themselves in the lower class is now basically equal.\u00a0 The percentage of whites who consider themselves in the lower class rose from less than a quarter in 2008 to 31% in 2012. \u00a0This brought them in line with blacks, whose percentage remained at a third. \u00a0The percentage of Latinos describing themselves as lower class rose to 40%, a ten percentage point increase from 2008.<\/p>\n<p>And not surprisingly, as the chart below shows, many\u00a0who self-identify as being in the lower class are experiencing great hardships.\u00a0\u00a0 In fact,\u00a01 in 3 faced four or all five of the problems addressed in\u00a0the survey.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.lclark.edu\/hart-landsberg\/2012\/09\/14\/the-continuing-relevance-of-class\/09-10-12-lower-class-10\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-1107\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"09-10-12-Lower-Class-10\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.lclark.edu\/hart-landsberg\/files\/2012\/09\/09-10-12-Lower-Class-10.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"411\" height=\"532\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In short, there is a lot of hurting in our economy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Politicians always seem to be talking about the middle class. \u00a0They need some new focus groups. \u00a0According to the Pew Research Center, over the past four years the percentage of adult Americans that say they are in the lower class has risen significantly, from a quarter to almost\u00a0one-third (see chart below).\u00a0 Pew also found that\u00a0the [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1853,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[349,29,23384,36,12498,252,8080,285,1760,1754,1757,76],"class_list":["post-51045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ageaging","tag-class","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-economics","tag-economics-great-recession","tag-healthmedicine","tag-housingresidential-segregation","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-blacksafricans","tag-raceethnicity-latinos","tag-raceethnicity-whiteseuropeans","tag-work"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1853"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51045"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51064,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51045\/revisions\/51064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}