Along with the American dream comes the Protestant work ethic which is the belief in the importance of hard work and productivity as behaviors that will be rewarded. However, the United States currently has the largest growing disparity between the high and low socioeconomic status classes in the world and it continues to grow. The poverty rates are higher and the lower classes have begun to grow in extreme disproportion to the upper classes. This can present a hardship for those of lower socioeconomic status since they, as well as other classes, may feel that their lower economic, educational, or employment conditions are solely a result of character rather than situational constraints. For the working class and the poor, working and eating are matters of survival, not taste.
Class is also culture.
As a result of the class you are born into and raised in, class is your understanding of the world and where you fit in. Classism is widely recognized in the United States and people rely on a variety of cues to determine socioeconomic status. The study was meant to examine whether a woman's social class could be validly judged from her wedding portrait. The women in the portraits were black and white and of comparable size. The pictures were primarily formal and showed only the upper portion of the bride's body.