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5 - The Upper Class and the Elite

from II - Applications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Lisa A. Keister  and
Darby E. Southgate
Lisa A. Keister
Affiliation:
Duke University, North Carolina
Darby E. Southgate
Affiliation:
Los Angeles Valley College
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Summary

Although the majority of the U.S. population falls into the middle class, it is often the people at the ends of the distribution who attract the most attention. This chapter discusses the top end of the hierarchy: the upper class. Of the approximately 106 million households in the United States, only about 430,000 have a net worth of $10 million or more, about 17,000 have a net worth between $50 million and $99 million, and only about 7,000 have a net worth of more than $100 million (Havens 2004). Those at the very top (i.e., the 7,000 richest families) account for only about 0.01 percent of the population; however, they own approximately $2 trillion of the country’s $43 trillion in household wealth and earned $40 billion of the total $7 trillion in household income (Havens 2004; Schervish 2005).

In this discussion of the upper class, we include all families with high wealth and high income. We include those with a legacy of upper-class status (i.e., “the old rich”) and those who recently joined the upper class (i.e., “the new rich”). We discuss how researchers identify who is in the upper class and their assets, debts, jobs and occupations, consumption patterns, and resulting lifestyles. Because the rich make significant philanthropic contributions, we also address charitable giving and volunteering among the upper class. There is a long tradition of social theory that attempts to explain how wealth and power are related and that identifies a group typically called the power elite. We discuss the main theories in the literature and explore their relevance for the distribution of power today. We then explore the role of women and under-represented groups in the elite. We conclude with a discussion of how business cycles and inequality are related.

Type
Chapter
Information
Inequality
A Contemporary Approach to Race, Class, and Gender
 , pp. 171 - 214
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2012

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