Information about Underclass

The contemporary concept of the underclass is a sanitized term for what was known in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as the undeserving poor, and was first used by Gunnar Myrdal in 1962. The usage came into wide circulation in the early 1980s, following Ken Auletta`s (1982) use of the term in three articles published in The New Yorker in 1981, and in book form a year later. Auletta refers to the underclass as a group who do not "assimilate" (1982: xvi quoted in Morris, 1994: 81), identifying four main groups:

• the passive poor, usually long term welfare recipients;
• the hostile street criminal, drop-outs, low class prostitutes, and drug addicts;
• the hustlers, dependent on the underground economy, but rarely involved in violent crime;
• the traumatised drunks, drifters, homeless bag ladies, and released mental patients.

In 1984 Charles Murray published a book called Losing Ground, which popularized the term underclass.^[1] This was far from the first time the idea of a group of people below or outside the class structure was discussed. Karl Marx referred to a group he called the lumpenproletariat. He described this group as

This scum of the depraved elements of all classes ... decayed roués, vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, brothel keepers, tinkers, beggars, the dangerous class, the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society." ^[2]

Many other terms have been used to "describe a section of society which is seen to exist within and yet at the base of the working class."^[3]

United States

Main article: American lower class

In the United States the term is used by certain scoiologists such as Dennis Gilbert to described the most disenfranchised socio-economic demographic with the least access to scarce resources. The American underclass is estimated to constitute roughly 12% of households. Incomes are far below the median and often fall below the poverty line. The vast majority of persons in this class are, for a variety of reasons, not active participants in the labor force. The underclass is, therefore, distinguished from other social classes by its reliance on government transfers. Only a few members of this class have graduated from high school.^[4][6]

See also

• Social class
• Social exclusion
• Social hierarchy
• Social inequality
• Social mobility
• Reserve army of labour
• Overclass
• Subculture

References

Social stratification : Social class  •  • [ e]
Bourgeoisie	Upper class	Ruling class	Nobility	White-collar
Petite bourgeoisie	Upper middle class	Creative class	Gentry	Blue-collar
Proletariat	Middle class	Working class	Nouveau riche/Parvenu	Pink-collar
Lumpenproletariat	Lower middle class	Lower class	Old Money	Gold-collar
	Slave class	Underclass		Classlessness
Social class in the United States
Upper class	Middle class	Lower class	Income	Educational attainment