Americans increasingly vote along class lines, not racial ones: WSJ

NEW YORK, Nov. 15 (Xinhua) -- New fault lines are emerging in American society based more on class than race, and the shift helped deliver the White House to Donald Trump and could continue to alter the political landscape if more Americans identify themselves less in the context of race and gender and more as belonging to a certain economic class, reported The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on Friday.

"The shift toward class-based sorting also comes as some of the nation's longtime racial categories -- white, Black and Hispanic -- are dissolving fast into more fluid and complex identities," said the report. "As those categories blur, other factors, like education levels and class, are playing larger roles in Americans' quality-of-life and are increasingly driving voters' choices."

Thirty years ago, Americans with a college degree accounted for roughly 20 percent of the population and held the same percentage of household wealth as those without a degree, according to the census and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Today, Americans with a college degree account for 38 percent of the population and 73 percent of household wealth, according to the report.

Those with a college degree live nearly nine years longer on average than those without, according to a 2023 study by Princeton University economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton. The gap has tripled in one generation, from 2.5 years in 1992.