[Peace-discuss] Who's middle-class in America?

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Gore Vidal once exclaimed, "Thank God I wasn't born middle class!"  But he
probably was -- the boundaries are hard to fix. Here the Pew Research Center
distinguishes four middle classes in America. Doug Henwood (on whose lbo-talk
list this was posted) explains that, since just over half the US population call
themselves middle class, you need to divide the percentages below by two to
get the share of the whole US population. Of US population as a whole, slightly
more than a quarter call themselves something like "lower" and slightly less
than a quarter, something like "upper."]

	America's Four Middle Classes
	by Richard Morin, Senior Editor, Pew Research Center
	July 29, 2008

There isn't one American middle class; there are four. Each is different from
the others in its attitudes, outlook and financial circumstance -- sometimes in
ways that defy traditional stereotypes of the middle class, according to an
analysis of a recent national survey conducted by the Pew Research Center Social
and Demographic Trends Project.

One middle class is doing quite well, thank you. And members of this group --
predominantly male, disproportionately well-educated and financially secure --
expect to do even better in the future. It's the largest of the four groups,
comprising slightly more than a third of the 53% of Americans who identify
themselves as "middle class" in the Pew survey. Call them the Top of the Class.

Life is considerably tougher for the Struggling Middle, a group
disproportionately composed of women and minorities. In fact, many members of
the Struggling Middle have more in common with the lower class1 than they do
with those in the other three groups and actually have a lower median family
income than Americans who put themselves on the lowest rungs of the social
ladder. About one-in-six self-identified middle class Americans fall into the
Struggling Middle.

The Satisfied Middle has everything but money; their comparatively modest
incomes have not muted their sunny outlooks or overall satisfaction with their
lives. This group is disproportionately old and disproportionately young; middle
aged adults are relatively scarce in the Satisfied Middle. They make up a
quarter of the middle class.

By the conventional yardsticks of income, education, age, employment and family
status, the fourth middle class group is the most middle class of all -- and the
most dissatisfied and downbeat of the four groups. While they enjoy some of the
economic advantages of the Top of the Class, they express many of the same bleak
judgments about their lives as those in the Struggling Middle. Call them the
Anxious Middle; they make up slightly less than a quarter of all middle class
Americans.

These four groups are all part of the 53% majority of Americans who identified
themselves as "middle class" in a Pew Research telephone survey taken from Jan
24 through Feb. 19, 2008 among a nationally representative sample of 2,413
adults. The groups were revealed by a statistical technique known as cluster
analysis that searched for patterns in the way these self-identified middle
class Americans answered key survey questions.

Two of the groups that emerged from this analysis -- The Satisfied Middle and
Anxious Middle -- straddle the statistical middle of the American life. But the
Top of the Class and Struggling Middle seem, in some ways, anything but middle
class. Why don't those in the Struggling Middle identify with the Lower Class?
After all, their median family incomes fall well below the earnings of those
Americans who say they're in the least advantaged social class. And why don't
those seemingly privileged members of the Top of the Class identify with the
Upper Class, with whom they seem to share so many advantages?


Part of the explanation likely lies with the powerful attraction that the label
"middle class" has on most Americans and the stigma that some might associate
either with the upper or lower class labels. But the analysis suggests that's
not all of the answer. On many key measures, the Top of the Class is different
from the 21% of Americans who identify themselves as upper class in the Pew
Research survey. For one thing, they don't make as much money: the median income
of those in the Top of the Class is $86,280, while median income for the upper
class is $95,875, or more than $30,000 above the overall middle class median.
And in terms of levels of education, total wealth and how they rate their lives,
the Top of the Class lags behind those in the upper class.

Similarly, those in the Struggling Middle are, as a group, demonstrably
different from those who identify with the lower class. They're significantly
more likely to be male, to be young and to be single. But more importantly, they
are more satisfied with their lives and more likely to say they're living better
than their parents. Also, they are more hopeful about their own futures and, in
particular, the future of their children. A 40% plurality of the Struggling
Middle say they expect their children's lives will be "much better" than theirs
are, compared with 25% of those who identify with the lower class. For these
middle class Americans, at least for now, the American Dream may be more a dream
than a reality -- testimony that "middle class" is as much a state of mind as it
is a financial condition.

Taken together, this statistical typology of the four middle classes paints a
nuanced picture of the American middle class and those who claim membership in
it. Rather than being demographically and culturally monotonic, America's middle
class is an amalgam of distinct groups that share different outlooks on life and
life experiences, a blend of young and old, black, white and Latino, optimists
and pessimists, achievers and dreamers, those who are barely hanging on to the
Middle Class Dream and those who are living it fully.

Find a detailed statistical portrait of the four faces of the American middle
class at pewsocialtrends.org.

Notes

1 Survey respondents were asked which social class they identified with: the
upper class, the upper-middle class, the middle class, the lower middle class or
the lower class. For purposes of this study and reports based on this poll, the
upper class is comprised of those who identified with the upper or upper middle
class, or 21% of the sample. The lower class is defined as those who said they
were lower middle or lower class while the middle class comprise 25% of the
sample. Fifty-three percent identified themselves as middle class and the
remainder did not answer the question.
Figure

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/911/americas-four-middle-classes