1. Do you notice any similarities in the way social class is discussed in readings 4.1 and 4.2? Do you notice any differences in the way these two readings differentiate between social classes? In 4.1 reading, term “social class” is used in American culture but is not well-defined or well-understood. Low to high, based on income, wealth, power, culture, behavior, heritage, and prestige. Word “class” appended after terms such as working, or ruling. Where people put themselves into categories. Income is a powerful determinant of the social class. Age makes a difference. Social class identification by household income. Categories by lower, working, middle, upper-middle, and upper. Educational level. College graduate level between those who are working class and those who are not. Depends on where you finished school, high school degree middle class edges out working class. People living in rural areas are less likely to identify in a higher social class compared with those living in urban and suburban areas. But in reading 4.2, it has a different approach than reading 4.1 because it’s about median household income with the subway and individual subway lines. Poverty to considerable wealth.
  2. Pick the station closest to where you live. Using the concepts from Reading 4.1. what social class tends to live in your neighborhood? Are you surprised (or not) by the answer? Do you feel it is an accurate representation of the people living in your neighborhood? The station closest to where I live is 77 street in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn and the train line is R. Median household income is 71,904 and I found surprising how it was higher than the last two stops the train makes. In the chart, the line increased by a little bit.
  3. Based on reading 4.2, do you notice a general pattern about social classes in NYC? I can tell a big pattern with the different boroughs. The reason with this statement is it depends how the people live like. Manhattan where it’s so expensive so the income is higher. Queens tends to decrease the income. I feel like the people living in different boroughs make the social class different as well. It could be the Hispanics and Latinos where they are in lower and middle classes, finding where it’s better to live in their place at life.

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