Poor White is a sociocultural classification used to describe economically disadvantaged Whites in the English-speaking world, especially White Americans with low-income. In the United States, Poor White (or Poor Whites of the South for clarity) is the historical classification for an American sociocultural group, of generally Western and/or Northern European descent, with origins in the Southern United States and in Appalachia. They first were classified as a social caste in the Antebellum South, consisting of white, agrarian, economically disadvantaged laborers or squatters, who usually owned neither land nor slaves.