classmates in Chicago anyway. But moving means something very different for working-
class people. Remember the fellow who hissed, “I sell toilets”? It’s safer to hang out with
people you’ve known forever who will not judge you on your often-inglorious job.
Familiar faces provide a buffer against humiliation.
Then there’s the question of what moving away might imply: that you care more about
your job than your community. Part of the reason the working class doesn’t move to
where the jobs are is because of these deep ties to their communities. And this
communitarian streak manifests in other, clearly laudable ways. Households earning
$50,000 to $75,000 give away far more of their discretionary income (7.6%) than do
households earning $100,000 or more (4.2%).^84 The middle-class Maryland towns of
Capitol Heights (majority white) and Suitland^85 (majority black) give away a higher
proportion of their incomes than the tony suburbs of McLean, Virginia, and Bethesda,
Maryland.^86 Remember how Vance’s father’s church bought him a car when he was
unemployed? These were not affluent people.
Sherman describes a white rural family that sheltered and fed, over the years, some 200
local kids who were escaping physical abuse or parental addiction. This was a serious
financial strain, but nearly half of the 55 people Sherman interviewed had cared for
children who were not biologically related to them.^87
Non-privileged people, whether poor or working class, tend to be more rooted than
American elites. Their lack of market power means that they rely on close networks of
family and friends for many things more affluent folks purchase on the open market, from
child and elder care to home improvement projects. Moving would eliminate this safety
net, and having to pay for child care might well erase the economic benefits of moving.
At a deeper level, non-privileged people invest much more of their identities in their
close-knit families and communities than do more privileged ones. Poor and working-
class people derive social honor from their reputations in communities of people who’ve
known them “forever.” Moving for them is not like moving from New York to San
Francisco to crash in your college roommate’s apartment while you found a start-up
among people who have been trained since childhood to build fluid careers based on fluid
networks of personal and business acquaintances. It’s throwing away the only
relationships that give you the prospect of social honor, the only social life you know how
to create, and the social safety net that has seen you through.
Among the poor and the working class, social lives often revolve around family. This
- Why Doesn’t the Working Class Just Move to Where the Jobs Are?