How can you tell if Americans are "poor"?

TV shows are filmed in studios on sound stages and for practical reasons obviously all the houses look big in the interiors. The house in Roseanne is same as the one in Frasier near enough size wise, it's just so they can film the scenes easily. They might use older more crap looking furniture or fake grime and dirt to make it look dilapidated? But it's not real!

Teeth and hair.

It's the same here. If you think about a BBC crime drama or an ITV series, very rarely do they live in a 2 bed semi in a town centre. It's normal a big house, open plan kitchen and all glass patio doors onto a huge garden so the murderer can spy on them.

There can be large houses in places that were nice but in now run down neighbourhoods (overgrown lawns, cars parked on the lawn, blocked up windows, children out late without parents, people looking sketchy hanging out on the corner). A bit like Marianne's house in Sligo in Normal People?

You can tell from how people speak as well - grammatically correct as well as the topics of conversation. E.g. do they talk about world or cultural events, traveling, etc. or do they speak poorly about insular topics?

Are they wearing new clothes and have their teeth been cared for and probably whitened?

Like here, there are certain subsets of wealth that have different identifying features - like old money vs new money.

I don't think that the places ordinary people live often feature on TV. (Not in American but also not in the UK)

The news footage of hurricane preparations and aftermath was an eye-opener to me. (I imagined American life as based in apartments and houses featured in films and shows until then. )

'My name is Earl' was my first sight of comedy set in another sort of America.

The size of the house or plot of land isn't a good indicator as land is/was very cheap in rural areas in particular. You would need to judge by other indicators.

Age and type of furniture, cleanliness, dress of the character. Often poor characters are shown as less kempt so not clean shaven and scraggly hair.

Old rusty vehicles in the garden, long unmown grass. Do they drink cheap booze in the middle of the day, canned beer rather then bottled beer or wine etc. do they live in a trailer? Often a house that looks old would be considered a poverty indicator where as to us it would be 'characterful'.

Obviously this really depends on the production and how important that detail is to the plot of the story and how much effort they are putting into pressing that point. Just like us they utilise plenty of stereotypes as shortcuts in stories to avoid wasting screen time on explaining that THIS redneck in a dirty wifebeater on his trailer porch is different from the other rednecks etc.

Yes, it’s incredibly easy to tell.

For those unfamiliar with the country, space generally isn’t an issue outside of major city centers (where it’s a major issue). For example, a secondary school teacher in, say, the outskirts of Phoenix AZ married to a (say) hospital administrator on a 5-figure salary, could have a house of maybe 3000 sq ft (around 300sq m), 4/5 bedrooms and 3.5/4 bathrooms, an enormous garden, two cars, peace and quiet. Maybe even an in-ground pool. They’d be absolutely appalled at the housing conditions of a couple doing the same jobs in, say, the outskirts of Birmingham.

But land is cheap in AZ (mostly). Houses are thrown up cheaply. Doors are hollow. Gardens have shallow turf. Trees aren’t mature. Plumbing is new but basic. The community is spread out and I’ll thought through. Car lease costs for two cars probably costs as much as or more than the mortgage. They’ll shop and Costco and the equivalent of Lidl. There’s lots of space in the house but the countertops will be laminate; the windows will be small and spread far apart; there will be volume with double height ceiling in the entrance hall, but this will be because it was cheaper to build this way (and cooler in summer) than to put in flooring upstairs. There will be cheap carpet rather than hardwood floors. Kitchen cabinets will be pine. Faucets will be cheap. Appliances will be American brands (not the best quality).

It’s all about what you’re familiar with. In the same way that you can develop a radar to place a Brit pretty quickly and reliably after hearing them speak for 3 minutes, so you can most Americans by other pointers.

Some Americans think British culture is all Cambridge, Sherlock Holmes & afternoon tea.

Roseanne was about WC Americans. So is The Simpsons.

Lots of poor Americans live in mobile homes/trailers or are homeless