Sociology Notes: Families and Social Class

Demographic Facts (2025)

• World Population: 8.1 billion
• U.S. Population: 341 million
• Children under 18 as share of population: 22%
• Adults 65+ as share of population: 18%
• Official unemployment rate (July 2024): 4.3%
• Most populous country, China: 1.4 billion
• 2nd most populous country, India: 1.4 billion
• 3rd most populous country, USA: 341 million
• 4th most populous country, Indonesia: 282 million
• 5th most populous country, Pakistan: 252 million
• U.S. male life expectancy at birth: 75
• U.S. female life expectancy at birth: 80
• World total fertility rate: 2.3
• U.S. total fertility rate: 1.7
• US births per year (2024): 3.6 million
• Median household income: $75,000
• Total poverty rate: 12%
• Child poverty rate: 15%
• Poverty rate age 65+: 10%
• Unemployment rate range, 1970-2019: 3.5% – 15%
• Labor force participation rate, age 16+: 63%
• Percentage of U.S. adults who smoke cigarettes: 12%
• Non-Hispanic Whites as share of population: 58%
• Blacks as share of population: 14%
• Hispanics as share of population: 20%
• Asians / Pacific Islanders as share of population: 7%
• Life expectancy range across countries: 54 – 85
• American Indians as share of population: 1%
• Immigrants as share of population: 14%
• Adults age 25+ with BA or higher: 35%
• Voter turnout (2024, as percent of voting age pop.): 59%

Wealth Inequality in the United States (2022)

• Top 1%: 37% of wealth
• Top 0.1%: 13% of wealth
• 90-99%: 29% of wealth
• Next 40%: 19% of wealth
• Bottom 50%: 3% of wealth
• Data from the first two quarters of 2022.
• Source: Federal Reserve System (2022).

Gini Index

• Gini index: a measure of inequality in which 0 represents complete equality and 1 represents complete inequality.

• The Gini index offers a way to quantify how much inequality exists.

• A Gini index for family income of 0.45 means the United States is more unequal than any other rich country, including Germany (0.32) or France (0.33), but less unequal than some poorer countries such as Mexico (0.48) or Brazil (0.52).

• Equality:

  • Four people, each earns one stack of cash.
  • Any one person (25% of people) earns one stack of cash (25% of cash).
  • Any two people (50% of people) earn two stacks of cash (50% of cash).
  • Any three people (75% of people) earn three stacks of cash (75% of cash).
  • At the end, all the people earn all the cash.

• Inequality:

  • Four people, each earns one stack of cash.
  • Also, Betty gets four more stacks
  • Gini index: This area divided by the total lower triangle.
  • 0 = Perfect equality
  • 1 = Perfect inequality

• U.S. family income distribution, 2021

  • 90% of families earn less than $230,000, and the 10% above them earn 34% of all income.
  • Bottom 25% of families (below $40,000) have just 5% of total income.
  • Bottom 50% of families (below $80,000) have 19% of total income.
  • Gini index: 0.46

• U.S. Family Income Inequality, 1950-2021

  • The Gini index of inequality measures the extent of income inequality, with a score of 1 representing complete inequality (one family has all the income) and 0 representing complete equality (all families have equal income).

Increasing Inequality in the United States

• Income inequality in the United States has increased dramatically, and almost continuously, since the end of the 1960s.
• This is due to several factors affecting each economic class.
  • At the bottom: keeping the poor from improving their lot
  • In the middle: divergent fortunes pushing people up or down
  • At the top: the new superrich

Bottom: Keeping the Poor from Improving Their Lot

• The legal minimum wage set by the federal government has been allowed to fall as inflation eroded its value.
• A growing number of single-parent families live on only a mother’s income.

Middle: Divergent Fortunes

• The decline of the manufacturing sector hurt middle-income workers without a college degree.
• In the new service-oriented economy, those with higher education are doing much better.
• Women with higher education earn more than they did in the past.
• More people marry at their own education level, exacerbating the split between families with two high earners and those with two low earners.

The New Superrich

• A new pattern of very high incomes has emerged, spurred by government policies, such as:

  • Deregulation of the finance industry
  • Reduced taxes on certain kinds of income earned by the very rich
  • Relaxed restrictions on corporate lobbying for such policies

• The richest 1 percent now earn more than 13 percent of all income in the country.

• They have the political power to expand their riches

• The United States has more inequality, and does less to reduce it, than most other rich countries.

Poverty and Policy

• While class categories are not official, social class is important for government policy.
• The federal government uses income categories to set tax rates for progressive taxation.
• Government poverty definition determines who may get government benefits.

Poverty Line

• Poverty line: the level of income below which the federal government defines a family or individual as poor

• In 2021, a family of two adults and two children was considered “poor” if their combined income was less than $27,479.

• This definition created in the 1960s: family “economy food plan” times three. This is no longer adequate.

• The calculation doesn’t include important government benefits that some low-income families get, especially medical assistance and tax credits.

• It doesn’t take into account the different cost of living in different places.

• Improvement: Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM)

  • Includes welfare income, geographic variation, and taxes, housing, medical, and work expenses

• Percentage of U.S. population in poverty, 1967-2021, by age

• Update: Child poverty trends by race/ethnicity

Poverty in the United States

• Poverty has fallen dramatically since the peak in 2011.
• Poverty declined further during the pandemic
• Due to government intervention, especially the expanded child tax credit (increased, made refundable, paid monthly)
• Poverty is concentrated by race/ethnicity and family structure.
• Poverty for old people has dropped dramatically since the 1960s.
• People in poverty suffer from serious deprivation, especially housing insecurity.
• Many people move in and out of poverty.

Social Mobility

• Social mobility: the movement, up or down, between social classes

• In classical sociology studies, social mobility was studied by comparing the occupations of fathers with the occupations of sons

• The patterns for mother and daughters are similar but not as strong.

• Table 4.2 Mobility table of sons' occupations in relation to their fathers' occupations

Social Mobility and Class Persistence

• Compared with most other wealthy countries, the United States has less social mobility.
• The United States also has less upward mobility now than previous generations.
• The flip side of mobility is social class persistence.
• One way such social class persistence is maintained is through inheritance.
• Historically, inheritance taxes mitigated this inequality, but changes to the law have raised the taxable cutoff, increasing inequality.

Parenting styles and class persistence

• Annette Lareau’s study of parenting styles showed class differences.
• Middle-class parents practice concerted cultivation, an aggressive approach to parenting that makes constant efforts to develop children’s abilities in order to increase their educational and economic success.
• Working-class and poor parents practice the accomplishment of natural growth, believing that protection, comfort, and care are what children require to be happy and enjoy their childhood.

Family Structure

• Single parent face three kinds of scarcity
  • Money: Harder to meet basic needs, uncertainty and insecurity increase stress.
  • Time: Feel pressure to rely on “media time” as a parenting strategy.
  • Social capital: Fewer resources from others who can support them as children grow up.