“New Yorker Alexandra Penney relates how she lost her life savings to Bernie Madoff and is now faced with having to lay off her
three-day- a-week maid, Yolanda. ‘I wear a classic clean white shirt every day of the week. I have about 40 white shirts. They make me feel fresh and ready to face whatever battles I may be fighting …’ she wrote, but without Yolanda, ‘How am I going to iron those shirts so I can still feel like a poor civilized person?’ excerpt from “The Nouveau Poor Have Reached Numbers Too Large to Ignore” by Brabara Ehrenreich on AlterNet Based on the account above, which of the following socioeconomic “class distinctions” best describes Alexandra Penney? A. poor
B. middle-class
C. lower-class
D. nouveau richer
E. nouveau poor
<em>Remember</em>, according to sociologist, basically, there are <u>four </u>types of socioeconomic class distinctions, they are:
upper-class
middle-class.
lower-class (or working-class) and
poor
Alexandra Penney falls within the middle-class because her background information constitutes the life of a middle-class citizen. For example, one obvious pointer to this is found whenwe are told she has <em>"40 white shirts." </em><em>Meaning? </em>she has more than enough clothing. The fact she presently complains over her condition signifies she is in the struggling middle-class bracket.
