On Mar 15, 2010, at 1:03 PM, Richard Seymour wrote:
> Very interesting, and quite surprising that (as many as) 39% of
> Americans say they are working class, given the cues built into the
> poll
> which would encourage respondents to interpret class as status.
According to the full report on the poll, they asked the self-ID question first, and the stuff question afterwards.
I've posted a piece to this list on class ID I wrote for The Baffler long ago. Here's a graf on the history of class self-ID. Note that 39% is down from past results, but still pretty big.
Doug
----
> In 1949, Richard Center asked a sample of Americans to place
> themselves in one of four classes - middle, lower, working, or
> upper. (In that order. Things listed first have an advantage.) Just
> over half - 51% - said working class. In 1996, the General Social
> Survey (GSS), a near-yearly inventory of what the masses own, think,
> and feel, asking substantially the same question as Center (but in
> order going from lower to upper), 45% said working class - after
> decades of farewells to the working class. An equal share said
> middle class; 6%, lower; and 4%, upper. Two ABC polls that year
> asking people to place themselves in either of two classes found 55%
> working class, 44%, middle. A New York Times poll that year found 8%
> lower class; 47%, working; 40%, middle, and 3% upper.