Life circumstances The United States has what is known as a class system, and it is composed of various social classes based on a variety of dimensions. Social class in the United State typically is defined by some combination of one’s income, wealth, educational attainment, and occupational status (Giddens, 201). While defining social classes in the U.S. is difficult, most sociologists recognize four main categories: upper class, middle class, working class, and the lower class. Income refers to earnings from work or investments, while wealth refers to all of those assets an individual owns, such as cash, savings and checking accounts, stocks, bonds, real estate, etc. Most people make money from work, but for the wealthy, much of theirs is …show more content…
Her parents consider themselves as a Lower Middle Class. They are Middle Eastern family. Her mom is a nurse and her dad is a salesman. Their household income is around 120,000. They own a small house. Julie goes to a normal school. Her family plays a big role in her life. Just as parental educational level is an important predictor of children’s educational and behavioral outcomes, status of the parents is also important. Parental socioeconomic status may affect a child’s educational outcomes through a number of pathways, one of which is the child’s health. Since Julies parents are in lower middle class, she probably ends up working by the time she starts high school, so she could help out the parents and save up for college. It would be much harder for her to finish college too. She has a chance to change her class to a higher middle class, since she is really …show more content…
The gap between the poor and the rich has stretched to its widest levels since time memorial. Economic inequality also referred to as the gap between the poor and rich, wealth disparity or income inequality consists of the differences in the income and wealth distribution. The gap between the poor and the rich is related to the concept of equity: opportunity equality and outcome equality. Most of the time the poor get poorer and the rich get richer. Because of the lack of education there is limited job offers for poor or middle classes. They cannot have higher job positions. In this case Julie may end up being a sales associate or she might give up, because of the lack of money. Her parents both are trying hard, they have been saving up, so she won’t go through a hard time. They might even be able to move to higher class, if she continues to work hard. For Steve everything is still the same, he’s not working and he is depending on his mother wealth, but as soon as he starts to work, he would even be richer. And also since implementation of progressive taxation that will result to the rich being taxed relatively more as compared to the poor; hence the amount of income inequality in society will be reduced. Minimum wage legislation initiative will raise the income of the poorest workers. I think Since Julie family has to pay less tax, she has a good chance to save up