The New York Times has some interactive graphics showing various
types of data about social class and class mobility. You can see
where you fall in terms of four characteristics often used to
measure class status, see the overall class breakdown for
various occupations, and so on. This graph shows social class
mobility by depicting which social class (divided into
quintiles) the U.S. population fell into in 1998 based on the
social class they started out in from 1988: You can hover over a
particular group, such as “lower middle,” to see the outcome
just for them. Another graph of social mobility: This next graph
counters the idea that poor families remain poor forever (often
explained by some version of the “culture of poverty” thesis) by
showing that if you track a poor family over multiple
generations, there is a general trend toward upward mobility:
That isn’t to ignore the fact that being poor leads to
circumstances (poor schools, etc.) that make upward mobility
difficult. But the idea that poor families