9: Introduction to Social Problems and Issue of Class

1) Introduction - Thinking about Social Problems

Social scientists observe the specific features of society and its organization. These elements include structures, institutions, and role of human agency. Identifying problematic elements in these features then allows us to ponder the question: how should the world look? From question, we may conclude that certain areas of society may need to be re-examined and possibly changed.

One example could be the class structure, where the working class produces profit for the class that owns the means of production but benefits from their own work very little. (The means of production are the things you need to produce goods and services, such as factories, machinery, land, commodities, and money.) In other words, workers produce profit, but get a very low percentage of that returned to them in the form of wages and benefits. A solution to this inequitable situation could be to reorganize labor so that those that work receive a fair share of what they have earned.

The job of social scientists is to see past any barriers that prevent positive change and strive for a better world for all. This kind of blue sky thinking is what allows societies to progress, by imagining an ideal world without social problems and then endeavoring to get as close as possible.

When seeking to understand and address social problems, an immediate questions emerges for social scientists. What are social problems? The answer to this question depends on how you view the social world, what it means to you, and how you think it could or should be organized differently. It also depends on how the potential problem is represented and framed.

When looking at a social problem, there are six questions you can ask to determine how the problem is represented. Bacchi (2009)

• What’s the problem represented to be? (For example, say the “problem” is drug abuse. Is that represented as a problem simply of greater criminal law enforcement, or is it also discussed as a matter of public health, or of social or economic policy?)
• What presuppositions or assumptions underlie this representation of the problem? (Is addiction considered only as stemming from the personal moral failure of the individual addict or as involving greater societal issues such as unemployment or lack of affordable medical care?)
• How has this representation of the problem come about? (Have the media or politicians talked about the problem of drug abuse continually in one way or another? Is scientific evidence one way or the other being presented or is all the talk just for personal or political reasons?)
• What is left unproblematic in this problem representation? Where are the silences? Can the problem be thought about differently? (Does anyone talk about the role of pharmaceutical companies and their aggressive marketing of addictive pain medication as part of the problem, or is that not discussed because it’s not being considered as part of the problem? Is the problem of rising addiction in white middle class areas being discussed?)
• What effects are produced by this representation of the problem? (Is policy being made that only goes after “street addicts” as criminals, or does policy address the issue more broadly and therefore possibly more effectively?)
• How/where has this representation of the problem been produced, disseminated and defended? How could it be questioned, disrupted or replaced? (Has all the talk about this issue come from just a few sources whose views then simply cascaded throughout society? Can that be stopped by encouraging official government or private sector information or scientific education campaigns?)

Another point to consider is that while the media obviously reacts to social issues it can also be active in the creation of social issues. For example,

• media can perpetuate the viewpoint that governments (or others) employ,
• media can leave important information out of its reporting (for example, through active bias on the part of the editor/owner, or through time constraints in getting a story to press), and
• media can have a stake in sensationalizing stories (stories that draw attention or are sensational in nature tend to get more reads and clicks which in turn is good for the profit of the media outlet).

We often rely on other people or institutions such as the media or government to process and select information on our behalf. This means our beliefs are susceptible to being manipulated based on how those people or institutions chose to present information to us and what information they chose to present and not present. This puts those that process or control information in a position of power.

Good social scientists cast a critical eye over how social issues are framed, either through media or any other way. This helps ensure that all aspects of the issue are examined, all evidence is taken into account, and the best policy decisions can be made.

2) Problems of Class

In society, we rank individuals on their wealth, power, and prestige. The calculation of wealth is the addition of one’s income and assets minus their debts. Power refers to someone’s ability to get others to do their will, regardless of whether those people want to or not. Prestige refers to the reputation or esteem associated with a person’s position in society (e.g., if they are educated or not, or in a “prestigious” occupation or not). This social stratification system or ranking creates inequality in society and determines one’s social position.

Multiple factors influence social standing, however, people often assume hard work and effort leads to a high status and wealth. Socialization reinforces this idea that social stratification is a result of personal effort or merit (Carl 2013). But while this concept of meritocracy says that people occupy the place that they earn through their own effort and skill, no society exists where the determination of social rank is purely on merit.

For example, inheritance alone shows social standing is not always individually earned. Some people have to put little to no effort to inherit social status and wealth. Also, factors such as age, disability, gender, race, and region influence a person’s opportunities for obtaining social standing. Another flaw of meritocracy is how society measures social contributions. Janitorial and custodial work is necessary in society to reduce illness and manage waste just as much as surgery is to keep people healthy and alive, but surgeons receive greater rewards than janitors do for their contributions. While some jobs carry a certain amount of respect or esteem or gratitude such as teachers or nurses, they also receive relatively little in terms of pay or power for it.

Each class lifestyle requires a certain level of wealth in order to maintain that lifestyle. A person’s standard of living affects their life chances (i.e., opportunities and barriers), which in term influences their ability to afford food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, other basic needs, and luxury items. Different lifestyles, different standards of living, then affect how much of those needs will be met.

A person’s standards of living also effects their cultural identity. People living in impoverished communities have different cultural norms and practices compared to those with middle incomes or families of wealth. For example, the urban poor often sleep on cardboard boxes on the ground or on sidewalks and feed themselves by begging, scavenging, and raiding garbage (Kottak and Kozaitis 2012). Middle income and wealth families tend to sleep in housing structures and nourish themselves with food from supermarkets or restaurants.

Language and fashion also vary among these classes because of educational attainment, employment, and income. People will use language like “white trash” or “welfare mom” to marginalize people in the lower class and use distinguished labels to identify the upper class such as “noble” and “elite.” Sometimes people often engage in conspicuous consumption or purchase and use certain products (e.g., buy a luxury car or jewelry) to make a social statement about their status (Henslin 2011). Nonetheless, the experience of poor people is very different in comparison to others in the upper and middle classes and the lives of people within each social class may vary based on their position within other social categories including age, disability, gender, race, region, and religion.

Middle Class

Many people consider themselves middle class, but there are differing ideas about what that means. People with annual incomes of $150,000 call themselves middle class, as do people who annually earn $30,000. That helps explain why, in the United States, the middle class is broken into upper and lower subcategories.

Lower-middle-class members tend to complete a two-year associate’s degree from community or technical colleges or a four-year bachelor’s degree. Upper-middle-class people tend to continue to postgraduate degrees. They’ve studied subjects such as business, management, law, or medicine.

How is social class connected to housing? What might you be able to assume about this suburban subdivision in Colorado Springs?

Middle-class people work hard and live fairly comfortable lives. Upper-middle-class people tend to pursue careers, own their homes, and travel on vacation. Their children receive high-quality education and healthcare. Parents can better support the specialized needs and interests of their children, such as more extensive tutoring, art lessons, and athletic efforts, which can lead to greater social mobility for the next generation. Families within the middle class may have access to some wealth, but they must also work to earn an income to maintain this lifestyle.

In the lower-middle class, people hold jobs supervised by members of the upper-middle class. They fill technical, lower-level management, or administrative support positions. Compared to lower-class work, lower-middle-class jobs carry more prestige and come with slightly higher paychecks. With these incomes, people can afford a decent, mainstream lifestyle, but they struggle to maintain it. They generally don’t have enough income to build significant savings. In addition, their class standing is more precarious than those in the upper tiers of the class system. When companies need to save money, lower-middle-class people are often the ones to lose their jobs.

Sociologists have conducted a variety of studies on the middle class. In one influential study, sociologist Michèle Lamont (1992) explored the symbolic boundaries that middle-class men drew to determine who was part of the middle class and who was not. Lamont found that the men drew boundaries based on cultural, socioeconomic, and moral criteria. Focusing on the socioeconomic criteria, she discovered that they associated money with freedom, control, and security. Money provided a certain comfort level that became a symbol and reward of professional success. It also provided cars, homes, and vacations.

The middle-class men also valued membership in prestigious groups and associations, including churches, chambers of commerce, political parties, and alumni associations. All of these organizations provide additional opportunities to meet other middle-class people and build connections with them. Furthermore, belonging to such groups and associations provides information on socioeconomic status, signaling that members have achieved a certain income level and that they’ve been accepted by the right kinds of people.

The middle class tends to raise their children in a particular way. They engage in what sociologist Annette Lareau calls “concerted cultivation.” Concerted cultivation is when parents “deliberately try to stimulate their children’s development and foster their cognitive and social skills” (Lareau 2003:5). To accomplish this, middle-class parents encourage their children to become involved in activities outside the home. This leads middle-class children to develop a set of skills and dispositions that help them navigate institutions that value such skills. As a result, the children start developing a sense of entitlement, the belief that they deserve these benefits.

Lower Class

The lower class is also referred to as the working class. Just like the middle and upper classes, the lower class can be divided into subsets: the working class, the working poor, and the underclass. Compared to the lower-middle class, people from the lower economic class have less formal education and earn smaller incomes. They work jobs that require less training or experience than middle-class occupations and often do routine tasks under close supervision.

Working-class people, the highest subcategory of the lower class, often land steady jobs. The work is hands-on and often physically demanding, such as landscaping, cooking, cleaning, or building.

Michèle Lamont (2000) also conducted a study looking at the boundaries drawn by working-class men. She found that, unlike men from the middle class, working-class men placed a stronger emphasis on moral boundaries. Emphasizing morality helped the workers maintain a sense of self-worth. The moral boundaries allowed them to affirm their dignity independently of their relatively low social status and to locate themselves above others. Particularly, they drew a line between themselves and the more economically advantaged whom they perceived as less morally pure.

Working-class families tend to engage in the “accomplishment of natural growth” method of child-rearing. In this approach, families provide the basic necessities, which is an accomplishment given the harsh economic conditions they face. Parents assume that their children’s growth will occur naturally. As a result, there is less emphasis placed on participating in after-school activities. Instead, the children engage in child-initiated play with friends and family (Lareau 2003).

While there are benefits to this approach to raising children, our institutions tend to favor middle-class child-rearing techniques. For example, schools tend to expect heavy parental involvement. For working-class kids, this disconnect between their socialization and what institutions expect from them leads to a sense of constraint (Lareau 2003; Calarco 2018).

Beneath the working class is the working poor. They have unskilled, low-paying employment. Their jobs rarely offer benefits such as healthcare or retirement planning, and their positions are often seasonal or temporary. They may work as migrant farm workers, house cleaners, or day laborers. Member education is limited. Some lack a high school diploma.

How can people work full-time and still be poor? Even working full-time, millions of the working poor earn incomes too meager to support a family. The government requires employers to pay a minimum wage that varies from state to state but that wage often leaves individuals and families below the poverty line. In addition to low wages, the value of the minimum wage has not kept pace with inflation. “The real value of the federal minimum wage has dropped 17 percent since 2009 and 31 percent since 1968” (Cooper, Gould, and Zipperer 2019). Furthermore, the living wage, the amount necessary to meet minimum standards, differs across the country because the cost of living differs. Therefore, the amount of income necessary to survive in an area such as New York City differs dramatically from a small town in Oklahoma (Glasmeier 2020).

Models of family stress show that economic strain leads to increased psychological distress and interparental conflict (Miller et al. 2021). Parental distress and conflict are linked to harsher, more detached, and less nurturing, stimulating, and responsive parenting, which in turn predicts worse outcomes for children, such as increased internalizing and externalizing problems and less advanced cognitive and academic skills (Miller et al., 2021).

Much research finds that poor children are at increased risk for behavioral, psychological, and health problems not only during childhood and adolescence but also well into their adult years (Wagmiller & Adelman, 2009). In a type of vicious cycle, children growing up in poor households are at greater risk of continuing to live in poverty after they reach adulthood.

A Closer Look: Wealth and Inequality in the Western United States

Recently, some sociologists explored class disparities in small towns across the Western United States. In his book Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West (2020), Justin Farrell examines the class relationships between billionaires/millionaires and working-class people in Jackson, Wyoming. He found that billionaires and millionaires were attracted to Wyoming not only because they wanted to be “closer to nature” and authentic rural communities but also because living in Wyoming offered significant tax breaks. The resulting high concentration of wealthy people created the “richest county in the United States and the county with the nation’s highest level of income inequality” (Farrell 2020:3).

For the billionaires, the natural environment provided “therapeutic” experiences and became the focus of their engagement with the community. Instead of supporting organizations that provided social services, the ultra-wealthy turned their philanthropic efforts toward environmental and arts organizations, or what Farrell calls “gilded green philanthropy.” The billionaires and millionaires adopted some of the fashion of the working class and used working-class people to help navigate the stigma they thought they faced. In contrast, the working class, which was largely Latinx, struggled to get by, especially when it came to finding affordable housing.

Focusing on a similarly wealthy community, Jenny Stuber (2021) explored Aspen, Colorado, in her book Aspen and the American Dream: How One Town Manages Inequality in the Era of Supergentrification. In the book, Stuber begins with a contradiction, asking “How is it possible for a town to exist where the median household income is $73,000, but the median home price is about $4 million?” (Stuber 2021:1). She found that the unique place-based class culture of Aspen allowed the middle class to survive. In Aspen, its history of progressiveness, a priority on “Keeping Aspen, Aspen,” and an extensive affordable housing program made it possible for middle-class families to continue to live in the community. Families making up to $300,000 per year were eligible for subsidized housing (Stuber 2021:55). The city used a variety of tax policies to help fund the program and land use codes to help control the growth of the town.

In her book Dividing Paradise: Rural Inequality and the Diminishing American Dream, Jennifer Sherman examined a rural valley in Eastern Washington that was close to a variety of natural amenities. While the wealth disparities were not as vast as those in Jackson or Aspen, there still existed a complicated class dynamic. She documented the influx of “newcomers,” who tended to be wealthier and have higher amounts of economic, cultural, and social capital than the existing working-class community, called the “old timers.”

The newcomers felt a sense of community and connected to what was going on in the valley. They also had better access to housing, well-paying jobs, and social support. In contrast, old-timers felt increasingly isolated and struggled to get by. They faced an unstable and unaffordable housing market, while working low-wage and seasonal jobs. The newcomers displayed “class blindness,” the inability to comprehend how their class advantages worked for them, while blaming the struggles of old timers on their individual characteristics (Sherman 2021:63).

As you reflect on these three studies, what similarities can you identify between the locations? What are some major differences in these places? How might the characteristics of these places contribute to wealth inequality?

Hidden Rules of Class

Could you survive in poverty, middle class, or wealth? In her book A Framework for Understanding Poverty (2005), Dr. Ruby K Payne presents lists of survival skills needed by different societal classes. Test your skills by answering the following questions:

Could you survive in . . . (mark all that apply)

POVERTY

____ find the best rummage sales.

____ locate grocery stores’ garbage bins that have thrown away food.

____ bail someone out of jail. ____ get a gun, even if I have a police record.

____ keep my clothes from being stolen at the laundromat.

____ sniff out problems in a used car.

____ live without a checking account.

____ manage without electricity and a phone.

____ entertain friends with just my personality and stories.

____ get by when I don’t have money to pay the bills.

____ move in half a day.

____ get and use food stamps.

____ find free medical clinics.

____ get around without a car.

____ use a knife as scissors.

MIDDLE CLASS know how to....

____ get my children into Little League, piano lessons, and soccer.

____ set a table properly.

____ find stores that sell the clothing brands my family wears.

____ use a credit card, checking and /or savings account.

____ evaluate insurance: life, disability, 20/80 medical, homeowners, and personal-property.

____ talk to my children about going to college.

____ get the best interest rate on my car loan.

____ help my children with homework and don’t hesitate to make a call if I need more information.

WEALTH, check if you....

____ can read a menu in French, English and another language.

____ have favorite restaurants in different countries around the world.

____ know how to hire a professional decorator to help decorate your home during the holidays.

____ can name your preferred financial advisor, lawyer, designer, hairdresser, or domestic-employment service.

____ have at least two homes that are staffed and maintained.

____ know how to ensure confidentiality and loyalty with domestic staff.

____ use two or three “screens” that keep people whom you don’t wish to see away from you

____ fly in your own plane, the company plane, or the Concorde.

____ know how to enroll your children in the preferred private schools.

____ are on the boards of at least two charities.

____ know the hidden rules of the Junior League.

____ know how to read a corporate balance sheet and analyze your own financial statements.

____ support or buy the work of a particular artist.

Advantages of Being Upper Class/Disadvantages of Being Lower Class

Tangible advantages are associated with high socioeconomic status. People in the upper class likely have better access to healthcare, marry people of higher social status, attend more prestigious schools, and are more influential in politics than people in the middle class or working class. People in the upper class are members of elite social networks, effectively meaning that they have access to people in powerful positions who have specialized knowledge. These social networks confer benefits ranging from advantages in seeking education and employment to leniency by police and the courts. The higher up the class hierarchy one is in America, the better health, educational, and professional outcomes one is likely to have. Below are some examples of this.

Health

A person’s social class has a significant impact on their physical health, their ability to receive adequate medical care and nutrition, and their life expectancy. While gender and race play significant roles in explaining healthcare inequality in the United States, socioeconomic status (SES) is the greatest social determinant of an individual’s health outcome. Social determinants of health are the economic and social conditions that influence individual and group differences in health status. Social determinants are environmental, meaning that they are risk factors found in one’s living and working conditions (including the distribution of income, wealth, influence, and power), rather than individual factors (such as behavioral risk factors or genetics). Social determinants can be used to predict one’s risk of contracting a disease or sustaining an injury, and can also indicate how vulnerable one is to the consequences of a disease or injury. Individuals of lower socioeconomic status have lower levels of overall health, less insurance coverage, and less access to adequate healthcare than those of higher SES.

Individuals with a low SES in the United States experience a wide array of health problems as a result of their economic position. They are unable to use healthcare as often as people of higher status and when they do, it is often of lower quality. Additionally, people with low SES tend to experience a much higher rate of health issues than those of high SES. Many social scientists hypothesize that the higher rate of illness among those with low SES can be attributed to environmental hazards. For example, poorer neighborhoods tend to have fewer grocery stores and more fast food chains than wealthier neighborhoods, increasing nutrition problems and the risk of conditions, such as heart disease. Similarly, poorer neighborhoods tend to have fewer recreational facilities and higher crime rates than wealthier ones, which decreases the feasibility of routine exercise.

In addition to having an increased level of illness, lower socioeconomic classes have lower levels of health insurance than the upper class. Much of this disparity can be explained by the tendency for middle and upper class people to work in professions that provide health insurance benefits to employees, while lower status occupations often do not provide benefits to employees. For many employees who do not have health insurance benefits through their job, the cost of insurance can be prohibitive. Without insurance, or with inadequate insurance, the cost of healthcare can be extremely high. Consequently, many uninsured or poorly insured individuals do not have access to preventative care or quality treatment. This group of people has higher rates of infant mortality, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and disabling physical injuries than are seen among the well insured.

Health inequality refers to the unequal distribution of environmental health hazards and access to health services between demographic groups, including social classes. For example, poor and affluent urban communities in the United States are geographically close to each other and to hospitals. Still, the affluent communities are more likely to have access to fresh produce, recreational facilities for exercise, preventative healthcare programs, and routine medical visits. Consequently, affluent communities are likely to have better health outcomes than nearby impoverished ones. Affluent communities are also not likely to be located next to undesirable health factors such as landfills, hazardous waste, incinerators, sewage treatment plants, lead smelters, refineries and other noxious facilities. Poor ones are. This in turn has led to the environmental justice movement which recognizes that exposure to environmental harm is unequally distributed and seeks to redress the injustice that occurs when poor communities are harmed by hazardous waste, pollution, and other environmental factors.

The role of socioeconomic status in determining health results in heath inequality between the upper, middle, and lower or working classes, with the higher classes having more positive health outcomes.

Mental Health

Different classes have different levels of access to treatment and encounter different mental health stressors.

Mental health describes a level of psychological well-being or the presence/absence of a mental disorder. From the perspective of “positive psychology” or “holism,” mental health may include an individual’s ability to enjoy life and to demonstrate psychological resilience when confronted with challenges. The World Health Organization defines mental health as “a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community.”

What counts as healthy enjoyment and resilience depends upon one’s class perspective. Members of different classes encounter different stressors—lower class people face more financial stress in terms of meeting basic day to day needs – food, rent, clothes, medicine, school fees, transportation, etc. Upper class people might experience stress from the social pressures associated with elite circles. The evaluation of which mental states can be considered healthy and which require medical intervention also varies by class.

Definitions of mental health depend on cultural understandings in addition to biological and neurological findings. Members of different social classes often hold different views on mental health. Different social classes also have different levels of access to mental health interventions and to information about mental health. Thus, the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders varies widely by social class.

Due to less access to primary and secondary mental health care people from lower social classes appear to access treatment later than those of the upper class, experiencing crisis level intervention such as inpatient admission more often than people from higher social classes, who have more frequent contact with primary and secondary care providers such as GPs and counselling services. People in the lower class also may not receive the same type of care, for example, being more frequently treated with drugs rather than non-medication approaches. (Barnett et al 2022)

Mental Disorders (1837): To say that mental health is socially constructed means that its definition and criteria can change across time and culture. This lithograph illustrates the eight mental health disorders that were thought to be prominent in England during the early-19th century: dementia, megalomania, acute mania, melancholia, idiocy, hallucination, erotic mania, and paralysis. Since 1837, many of those disorders have been erased from medical textbooks or modified in light of changing social norms.

Education

Educational attainment is tied to social class, with upper class individuals acquiring higher degrees from more prestigious schools.

Education is a major component of social class, both directly and indirectly. Directly, individuals from higher social classes are more likely to have the means to attend more prestigious schools, and are therefore more likely to receive higher educations. Indirectly, individuals who benefit from such higher education are more likely to land prestigious jobs, and in turn, higher salaries. Just as education and social class are closely intertwined, stratification in education contributes to stratification in social class.

Educational attainment refers to the level of schooling a person completes — for instance, high school, some college, college, or a graduate degree. Upper class individuals are likely to attend schools of higher quality and of greater prestige than those attended by their lower class counterparts. Because members of high social classes tend to be better educated and have higher incomes, they are able to offer greater educational advantages, such as private schooling, to their children as well.

Upper-class parents are better able to send their children not only to exclusive private schools, but also to public state-funded schools. Such schools are likely to be of higher quality in affluent areas than in impoverished ones, since they are funded by property taxes within the school district. Wealthy areas will provide more property taxes as revenue, which leads to higher quality schools. Educational inequality is one factor that perpetuates the class divide across generations.

Such educational inequality is further reinforced by legacy admission, the preference given by educational institutions to applicants who are related to alumni of that institution. Practiced in university and college admissions (particularly in the United States), this practice emerged after World War I, primarily in response to the resulting immigrant influx. Ivy League institutions admit roughly 10% to 30% of students from each incoming class based on this factor.

Politics

The higher one’s social class, the higher their levels of political participation and political influence.

Social class impacts one’s level of political participation and political influence. Political participation refers to whether or not a person votes in elections, donates to campaigns, or attends public forums where decisions are made, such as town meetings or city council meetings, for example. Political influence refers to the extent to which one’s political participation achieves its desired results. For example, if one attends a public forum, is their opinion likely to be heard, or if they donate money, is a politician likely to support their desired policy?

Wealthy, well-educated Americans are more likely to vote and to donate money to politicians than lower class individuals. This trend means that middle and upper class individuals have greater political participation and greater political influence than those in lower positions. Additionally, higher status people are more likely to hold political positions than lower class people. An illustration of this is the presidential election between George W. Bush and John Kerry in 2004. Both had millions of dollars of accumulated wealth, and they both had higher degrees from prestigious institutions – Bush from Harvard and Kerry from Yale.

While the class system in the United States limits our potential, it does not have to remain that way. The stratification system is something that was created by people, so it can be altered and challenged by people. This is an area that social scientists, as well as non-social scientists, can study and work to improve.

References

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Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (US), Share of Net Worth Held by the Top 1% (99th to 100th Wealth Percentiles) [WFRBST01134], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; FRED [fred.stlouisfed.org], March 9, 2025.

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