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Most Americans think of themselves as “working class” today: Overall, 60% of U.S. adults say the term describes them well. And the identity is widely adopted by people across all income and educational groups – including half of both Americans who have a bachelor’s degree and those who are upper income.

Working-class identification does vary by education and income: It is highest among Americans without a four-year degree and those who are middle income. But an analysis of data from a Pew Research Center survey conducted earlier this year finds that seeing oneself as working class also has a heavy political tinge and differs by race and ethnicity.

Republicans are more likely than Democrats to identify as working class – even after taking economics, occupation, education and other factors into account. Overall, 67% of Republicans and Republican leaners say “working class” describes them well, as do 55% of Democrats. And wide partisan gaps are evident across many demographic and economic groups.

Working-class identification differs by race and ethnicity. In particular, White adults are more likely than Black adults to identify as working class. About six-in-ten White (62%) and Hispanic adults (59%) overall view themselves as working class, as do roughly half of Black (54%) and Asian adults (52%).

Class boundaries are fluid and depend, in part, on perceptions people have of the categories. When Americans hear “working class,” they might think of particular occupations or particular lifestyles or certain income levels. What is working class as a concept? But because there is no “official” definition – social scientists can vary in how they define and measure social classes in the United States even as they generally agree there are some different groups – people can report their own interpretations.

Because of this fluidity, I wonder if there is data that shows how many of those who said working class describes them well would also say that “middle class” also describes them well. The middle class has been a category to which many Americans have aspired, to have a successful American life where one is not lower class or upper class. In previous surveys, many Americans with varied traits have identified as middle class.

And it would be interesting to compare these findings to those of previous eras (with or without survey data). Are there periods in American history where American adults are more or less likely to identify as certain social classes and what influences these shifts? If there are times when majorities of Americans would identify as middle class, is this a shift and what caused it?

Loneliness and social class

Posted on August 15, 2026 by legallysociable

Recent data on loneliness in the United States suggests it is related to social class:

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Socioeconomic status is a consistent predictor of loneliness. According to the KFF study, adults in households making less than $40,000 in annual income are about three times as likely to report frequent loneliness as those in households making more than $90,000. In the Harvard survey, 29 percent of those earning less than $30,000 felt lonely, compared to 19 percent of those earning $50,000 and up. In the American Perspectives Survey, 1 in 5 U.S. adults without a college education said they had no close friends—about double the rate of those with at least a bachelor’s. In the American Time Use Survey, people making $25,000 a year or less spent almost six and a half hours alone in an average day, about 90 minutes more than those in the $25,000-to-$50,000 bracket and three hours more than those making $100,000 or more. The poorest group also had the sharpest increase since 2010, when they spent about four hours alone each day…

It’s a common predicament: Low-paying fields have changed. Many workers now have tenuous if any ties to others doing the same job.

In decades past, low-wage positions weren’t like this. “If you were a working-class person in the ’70s, you probably saw the same people every day at work,” said Arran Davis, a researcher at Oxford who studies social interaction and public health. “Maybe you went to one of these working men’s clubs or the same bar after work and you had a fairly large social network.” There was also a sense of pride and belonging in being part of a large, public-facing company, like one of the Big Three auto manufacturers, he adds…

For those in a low-paying sector that does involve a consistent worksite, high turnover in fields like hospitality, food service, and retail impedes bonding among co-workers…

The lack of social cohesion in working-class jobs contrasts with the norms of white-collar fields. Physicians, lawyers, software developers, engineers, teachers, accountants, financial managers, marketing professionals, and journalists are conditioned to see one another as colleagues and build professional networks inside their current place of employment and beyond. Attending happy hours and taking advantage of networking opportunities are often seen as parts of the job. These outlets may produce friendships and ease general socializing.

Sociologists have thought about the benefits of work from the beginning of the discipline. The benefits often include interactions with and relationships with other people. Karl Marx noted that modern work can alienate workers from each other.

At the least, the amount of time people spend at work means it has a high probability of being a place that decreases or increases loneliness. Work takes up a lot of time and humans are built for interaction. To not have interactions or connections at work can render it a difficult environment.

Could an anti-loneliness-at-work argument be pitched as being better for employees and the bottom line? If workers are chronically lonely or struggling to build relationships at work, does this not affect their abilities? Or at least affect the length of time they will spend in a particular role? If the well-being of workers affects work, why not make it a better work environment, which includes addressing loneliness.

Some programs offering housing assistance to residents with higher incomes

Posted on March 9, 2026 by legallysociable

As housing prices have gone up in recent years in much of the United States, some assistance programs now offer monetary help to people with higher incomes:

Down Payment Resource, a company that compiles information on more than 2,700 home-buying programs, shared data with The Washington Post that showed more than 115 programs have raised their income threshold requirements since 2023. In most of those cases, the programs now offer aid to would-be home buyers whose income is above their local median, sometimes well above.

Memphis, for instance, now offers down-payment assistance to households with twice the local median income that purchase in designated areas of the city. San Francisco offers loans of up to half a million dollars for first-time home buyers; a single person with income up to $218,200 can apply…

Adam Grubbs, who runs a municipal down-payment-assistance program in Aurora, Illinois, said local leaders there decided to use municipal funds (about $300,000) to give middle-income households support similar to a federally subsidized program for low-income buyers.

“It’s those police officers, your fire department staff, nurses, teachers: those people that, they do have good jobs, but with this housing market it’s still unaffordable for them. Even they need help trying to buy their first house,” Grubbs said.

These changes get at some key questions underlying how Americans view housing and housing policy:

Who needs help regarding housing?
Who deserves help regarding housing?

More broadly, is housing a human right, a privilege, available to those with the right resources, for those who work hard as individuals, or something else?

These changes in programs also remind me of a quote from a former Bank of England official: “Most countries have socialized health care and a free market for mortgages. You in the United States do exactly the opposite.” Providing homebuying assistance helps people achieve homeownership, a goal viewed as desirable in the United States.

Conversations in local communities can often help answer these questions. Local residents and leaders often have a sense of who they would like to see live in their community. Take the quote above involving Aurora as an example; municipal housing funds are designated for civil servants, potential residents that serve and who are seen as contributing to the community.

Finances, ideal lifestyles, and the push and pull away from cities experienced by young adults

Posted on November 22, 2025 by legallysociable

Looking back at residential patterns after the late 2000s economic crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, what motivated younger adults to leave cities and move to suburban or rural communities?

Later waves that arrived just after the Great Recession, however, had a different type of migrant identity. As luxury housing continued to be built in New York City and affordable areas disappeared, some residents found the big city “inhospitable to their desired urban lifestyle and identity”: “Many of today’s newcomers to Newburgh use the term ‘priced out’…though few actually left in direct response to their rents rising or their landlord pressuring them to move out,” Ocejo writes. “But cost still played an important role in their decision to relocate…. They felt displaced from their own potential and opportunities to thrive as middle-class urbanites living a specific city lifestyle in the metropolis.”

Herein lies the tension between getting “pushed” from a city versus “pulled.” Some contemporary migrants are pushed from a particular lifestyle and pulled by a promise that it can be built elsewhere. Unlike midcentury white flight—which was highly dependent on the construction of suburban housing, racism, and statecraft—middle-class millennials (especially those facing mounting city prices and remote work) find that smaller cities and towns cater to a broader vision for life, one that provides opportunities to buy a house, build a business, or comfortably raise a family…

“When people move from one community to another…they leave behind their old job, connections, identity, and seek out new ones. They force themselves to go meet their neighbors, or to show up at a new church on Sunday, despite the awkwardness,” Appelbaum writes. What this might mean for rural or metro areas is yet to be seen. But for people moving out of large cities, it’s redefining what upward mobility might look like. Building wealth through housing may be unattainable, but it’s being replaced by a search for a new American dream: self-actualization.

What I read in this description is an intertwining of financial matters and what lifestyle people see themselves having. Costs and resources matter; housing is a sizable portion of many budgets. Housing has become more expensive in many American metropolitan areas. But cultural narratives and individual aspirations also matter; what life does someone want to live? What do they see as a good life?

On this first factor, it helps to have more financial resources. The stories told in this article seem to involve people who had enough resources that they had options of where to live. They could make a major move, perhaps by selling a residence in one place to go to another. Or they had careers and job skills that enabled them to live in multiple places.

On this second factor, Americans have developed a lot of narratives over time about desirable lives. They want a single-family home in the suburbs. They want to be individuals who pursue their own path (the self-actualization suggested above). They want to engage community life. And so on.

Perhaps then it would be helpful to think about a two-pole line that demonstrates how people make decisions about where to live and what to pursue. On one side of the line is finances and what is possible in terms of money and resources. On the other side of the line is an image of the life they want to live and what that entails on a day-to-day and long-term basis. Depending on the current situation personally and in society, they might slide a marker more toward one pole than the other.

(Does this describe how young adults make these decisions or is this limited to a certain subset with particular resources and goals?)

Increased demand for airport lounges is a sign of elite overproduction?

Posted on July 28, 2025 by legallysociable

More travelers want to use airport lounges. Does this signal a broader problem in society?

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In the context of airport lounges, the “elite” are not just the ultra-wealthy, but the vast upper middle class—armed with a combination of higher degrees, status, and premium credit cards—now jostling for the same perks. But what if much of society has been turning into some version of an overcrowded airport lounge?

In an interview with Fortune Intelligence, Turchin said this theory makes sense and fits with his thesis when presented with the similarities. “The benefits that you get with wealth are now being diluted because there are just too many wealth holders,” he said, citing data that the top 10% of American society has gotten much wealthier over the past 40 years. (Turchin sources this statement to this working paper from Edward Wolff.)…

When asked where else he sees this manifesting in modern life, Turchin said “it’s actually everywhere you look. Look at the overproduction of university degrees,” he added, arguing that declining rates of college enrollment and high rates of recent graduate unemployment support the decreasing value of a college diploma. “There is overproduction of university degrees and the value of university degree actually declines. And so the it’s the same thing [with] the lounge.”

Noah Smith argues that elite overproduction manifests as a kind of status anxiety and malaise among the upper middle class. Many find themselves struggling to afford or access the very symbols of success they were promised—be it a prestigious job, a home in a desirable neighborhood, or, indeed, a peaceful airport lounge. He collects reams of employment data to show that Turchin’s theory has significant statistical support from the 21st century American economy.

The article suggests an increased number of travelers can access airport lounges and this hints at more people with money to spend. But I wonder how these other factors play in:

Different standards of living. How do expectations shift over time about accessing airport lounges or other luxury goods? How many other goods or services over time have moved from luxury goods to being available to masses of people?
Expectations about travel. A standard Internet narrative goes like this: airplane travel was once luxurious (forget the slow speeds). Then it became a mass phenomena and customers were treated poorly. Are airport lounges a way travelers are reclaiming a better travel experience?
The airlines helped create this demand by introducing this perk; now they are surprised it is popular? Do they want it to remain exclusive or do they want more travelers to access lounges (and then the airlines benefit further)? Put another way: did customers want this first or did airlines push the lounges?
Why not offer an upgraded experience for all travelers? Does this not generate as much revenue or status for the airlines?

If Delta is able to figure out how to make the lounge “work,” would their practices then translate to other areas of society?

How many suburban communities will allow chickens?

Posted on March 6, 2025 by legallysociable

Given the price of eggs, is this a moment when more suburban communities will allow residents to have chickens?

Americans like suburbs for multiple reasons. Some of these reasons might appear to support homeowners having chickens while others might seem to oppose it. A quick breakdown:

-Closer to nature: suburbanites keeping chickens feel they are closer to the land and to animals. Suburbs with chickens can feel more like rural areas.

-Middle-class aspirations: suburbanites pay a lot of attention to what yards should look like. For example, lush green grass is a preferred option in many places. Chickens can disturb this aesthetic. Or keeping chickens might be considered something that contributes to a lower status for a neighborhood or a community. At the same time, middle-class residents can tout the financial benefits of keeping chickens instead of paying for eggs.

-Single-family homes and the rights of property owners: suburbanites take property rights seriously. If you own your home, shouldn’t you have freedom to do with it what you want? However, many Americans live in HOAs that have particular standards or suburbanites live in communities where particular standards are maintained (such as the maximum length of the lawn). Is the ability to live a quiet suburban life with higher property values hampered if a neighbor has chickens?

Suburbanites could make arguments for chickens and against them out of the same common suburban values. This could mean that all of these debates are then local and depend on the context of the community. How many community members are in favor? How does the community view itself and do chickens fit into that vision? Do the current economic conditions push residents and leaders in one direction?

Argument: “The sharp decline in geographic mobility is the single most important social change of the past half century”

Posted on February 11, 2025 by legallysociable

People in the United States move less than they used to. One writer describes the consequences:

But over the past 50 years, this engine of American opportunity has stopped working. Americans have become less likely to move from one state to another, or to move within a state, or even to switch residences within a city. In the 1960s, about one out of every five Americans moved in any given year—down from one in three in the 19th century, but a frenetic rate nonetheless. In 2023, however, only one in 13 Americans moved.

The sharp decline in geographic mobility is the single most important social change of the past half century, although other shifts have attracted far more attention. In that same span, fewer Americans have started new businesses, and fewer Americans have switched jobs—from 1985 to 2014, the share of people who became entrepreneurs fell by half. More Americans are ending up worse off than their parents—in 1970, about eight out of every 10 young adults could expect to earn more than their parents; by the turn of the century, that was true of only half of young adults. Church membership is down by about a third since 1970, as is the share of Americans who socialize several times a week. Membership in any kind of group is down by half. The birth rate keeps falling. And although half of Americans used to think most people could be trusted, today only a third think the same…

As a result, many Americans are stranded in communities with flat or declining prospects, and lack the practical ability to move across the tracks, the state, or the country—to choose where they want to live. Those who do move are typically heading not to the places where opportunities are abundant, but to those where housing is cheap. Only the affluent and well educated are exempt from this situation; the freedom to choose one’s city or community has become a privilege of class.

A possible solution?

These three principles—consistency, tolerance, and abundance—can help restore American mobility. Federal guidelines can make the environment more amenable, but the solutions by and large cannot come from central planning; states and cities and towns will need to reform their rules and processes to allow the housing supply to grow where people want to build. The goal of policy makers, in any case, shouldn’t be to move Americans to any particular place, or to any particular style of living. They should instead aim to make it easier for Americans to move wherever they would like—to make it equally easy to build wherever Americans’ hopes and desires alight.

We will likely never be at a point where everyone will move to pursue certain opportunities – see an earlier post here – but this trend over time does go against earlier patterns. If more people were able to move, they might then be able to take advantage of housing or job opportunities.

One thing I have not seen in articles that highlight this: do more people want to move but can’t (which could be linked to social class)? Take some patterns from recent years. If more employers allowed work from home, would this free up people to move? If people perceive there to be more opportunities in the Sun Belt, how many move there (hence growing populations in recent decades) versus those who cannot?

Or, what if more people are used to not moving now and would stay put even if there were opportunities elsewhere? The era of mass mobility may be over and new generations are less used moving. Perhaps they want to stay closer to family or like staying rooted in one place.

Maybe the hyper mobility of Americans in the 19th and part of the 20th centuries was abnormal. Before then, opportunities were more restricted and people had stronger ties to families and communities. Why should humans move so frequently?

Looking forward, does easy access to social media and the Internet make it even easier to not move? People can access the connections and opportunities they want from wherever they are, as long as they have a fast connection.

“Symbolic capitalists” driving social media activity

Posted on December 24, 2024 by legallysociable

In his analysis of “symbolic capitalists” in We’ve Never Been Woke, sociologist Musa al-Gharbi summarizes research on who uses social media:

All said, it is a relatively small segment of the population that is “very online” with respect to social media, or that regularly consumes jouranalistic media in virtually any format (TV, online, print, podcasts) – let alone engaging with research by think tanks, nonprofits, activists, or academics. Mostly, it’s people like us. Virtually the entire political and cultural melodrama carried out in academia, policymaking spaces, media outlets, and social networking sites it carried out among symbolic capitalists. The views and priorities of most others are simply unrepresented in these spaces. And for their part, most of those who are not symbolic capitalists are not particularly interested in the highly idiosyncratic struggles we invest so much of ourselves into. (195)

This seems consistent with earlier reports I’ve seen. Social media activity is driven by a small set of users who are not representative of the American population at large.

This could be helpful to keep in mind when wondering if social media is fragmented or how widespread a trend is or whether algorithms could be driving people to different corners of the Internet. These features might be true AND social media as a whole might be driven by a small set of people who share particular positions and practices.

(Read more about the definition of symbolic capitalists here.)

The shift in voting patterns among the wealthiest Americans

Posted on November 1, 2024 by legallysociable

Here is one political shift that occurred in recent years:

Over the past decade and a half, however, the dynamic has dramatically shifted. In 2008, the top fifth of earners favored Democrats by just a few percentage points; by 2020, they were the group most likely to vote for Democrats and did so by a nearly 15-point margin. (Democrats won the poorest fifth of voters by a similarly large margin.) Democrats now represent 24 of the 25 highest-income congressional districts and 43 of the top 50 counties by economic output. A similarly stark shift has occurred if you look at college education rather than income. Perhaps most dramatic of all has been the change among wealthy white people. Among white voters, in every presidential election from 1948 until 2012, the richest 5 percent were the group most likely to vote Republican, according to analysis by the political scientist Thomas Wood. In 2016 and 2020, this dynamic reversed itself: The top 5 percent became the group most likely to vote Democratic…

That realignment leaves both parties in a strange place heading into November. Voters consistently say that the economy is the most important issue of the 2024 election. And yet the affluent overwhelmingly support Kamala Harris, whose administration favored bold redistribution and big government spending, while a critical mass of working-class voters favor Donald Trump, whose economic agenda consisted largely of cutting taxes for the rich and trying to kill the Affordable Care Act.

This is not the only political shift in recent years but an interesting one nonetheless. Are these political shifts enduring? Such a shift disrupts short-term activity but there could also be long-term consequences. With the resources and connections elites have, does a shift like this lead to other consequential changes?

While the article focuses on whether these voters are voting in their material best interests, another part is intriguing: how then does this fit with the American obsession on the middle-class and the political rhetoric and activity that goes along with this? Does the composition of who comprises the electorate for a political party than affect how much the party talks about the middle-class or pursues policy aimed to help that group?

And since I think about the suburbs a lot, how does this affect how the two parties view suburbs in the United States? Traditionally viewed as middle-class places with powerful local control, does this shift with new political bases at play?

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