Excerpt: Wealth Matters

Conley, Dalton M. [1999] 2005. "Wealth Matters". Pp. 143-148 in Understanding Society, 2nd ed., edited by Margaret L. Andersen, Kim Logio, and Howard Taylor. Belmont, CA: Thomson Learning, Inc.

This is a powerful article with a powerful point: social and economic class is not described by income, but by wealth. Dalton Conley contrasts two real families that are strikingly similar; both were young couples with two small children, both were low-income (at or just above the poverty line), both fathers were laid off from a sheet-metal factory and ended up taking minimum-wage jobs, and both had the same living expenses.

The only real difference between them was their assets. The first family owned their home, due to a loan from his parents and a mortgage co-signed by hers. The second family rented a "cheap" apartment in a bad neighborhood, which turned out to be more expensive in the long run; they lived under poor conditions, drained their savings, fought, and eventually divorced.

Conley goes on to point out that even though they the first family was earning about $4000 a year less than the second, they were in far better shape financially. And even though they were much better off, they would be considered "needier" than the second family by the US government and social researchers, who define "poverty lines" and "neediness" based on income rather than assets.

Conley asserts:

In order to understand a family's well-being and the life chances of its children—in short, to understand its class position—we not only must consider income, education, and occupation but also must take into account accumulated wealth (that is, property, assets, or net worth).

He then drops a bomb; the first family was white, and the second was black. Giving the families pseudonyms for confidentiality, he explains:

For the Smiths, it was not discrimination in hiring or education that led to a family outcome vastly different from that of the Joneses; rather, it was a relative lack of assets from which they could draw. In contemporary America, race and property are intimately linked and form the nexus for the persistence of black-white inequality.

The example is shocking, and it relays the importance of "intergenerational support". Conley agrees with the Marxist idea that property ownership determines one's social class, but also extends this idea to race. Blacks, who have historically had little to no assets under slavery and segregation, have little to no assets to provide to their children who must endure hardship without the resources to help them survive. Wealth is the difference in class and racial stratification.

Relevance: 4/5 (relevant)
Salience: 5/5 (very salient)

References:

• Pierre Joseph Proudhon - quoted. "Property is theft."
• Oliver, Melvin, and Thomas M. Shapiro. 1995. Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality. New York: Routledge. - cited in agreement.