What is defined as middle class

Note: This post and interactive calculator were originally published Dec. Say "Alexa, enable the Pew Research Center flash briefing". It organizes the public into nine distinct groups, based on an analysis of their attitudes and values.

Even in a polarized era, the survey reveals deep divisions in both partisan coalitions. Use this tool to compare the groups on some key topics and their demographics.

Pew Research Center now uses as the last birth year for Millennials in our work. President Michael Dimock explains why. About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research.

Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts. Newsletters Donate My Account. Research Topics. If we take a longer view—say, from to —we see that only the income of the upper class has recovered from the previous two economic recessions. Upper-class incomes were the only ones to rise over those 16 years.

This segmented rise has contributed to an ongoing trend since the s of the divergence of the upper class from the middle and lower classes. In another piece, Pew reported that the wealth gaps in between upper-income families and middle- and lower-income families were at the highest levels ever recorded. As a growing body of research is demonstrating in ever greater detail, there is a substantial racial wealth gap in the United States. Note that Pew researchers, like the U. Census Bureau, use the term Hispanic, not Latinx.

Black households did see progress, Pew reports. The percentage of lower-income White households stayed roughly the same, with increases at the top and a shrinking middle income group. And Asian households experienced increases at both the top and the bottom of the income scale. You can see this as you look below at the Note from the report.

So, the obvious follow-up question is: Where does that leave me? Into which class do I fall? Income data released by the U. Pew defines the middle class as those earning from two-thirds to double the median household income.

Easy, right? Just take your household income and see where you fit, given these numbers. The lives of families making the median income look very different, given the vastly different cost-of-living levels across the U.

This lived experience can make it difficult to determine your income class status. People in the aggregate tend to live, work, and socialize with people of similar income levels. For this reason, we often do not have accurate reference points that would help us gauge our actual class status. If you want to know exactly how you fit into the income class matrix, the Pew Research Center has a recently updated income calculator.

You can break down your class status first by state, metropolitan area, income before taxes, and members of the household, then by education level, age, race, and marital status. State and city taxes vary, access to healthcare varies, city living is expensive, and so are children. All of these factors can contribute to what class you feel you are in, regardless of what national statistics say. It turns out that lower class, middle class, and upper class are tricky terms to box in.

The Pew income calculator is a good start for learning where your income puts you, given where you live and some background factors. However, the class you're in is about more than just how much money you make. Before we leave the topic, it is worth taking some time to think about how other considerations factor into who and where you are.

Start with social and cultural capital, a concept debuted in by French sociologist and public intellectual Pierre Bourdieu. He said that in addition to economic capital, there are social and cultural capital. Social capital is your connections.

It is who you know, whom you socialize with, and who is in your circle. It is group membership, according to Bourdieu.

This cultural capital includes education level, skills, cultural knowledge and taste, and ways of behaving, speaking, and dressing. This additional influence is due to the existence of other forms of money.

Social and cultural capital offers different kinds of currency and a slightly different kind of class status. The upper, middle, and lower designations may no longer be the best way to look at where you fit.

They marry later, are better educated, and have larger and richer social networks. Reeves argues that this class is essential for understanding inequality for two reasons.

In any case, it is more than enjoying comfort. Zero would mean no relationship between parental income and child income, while a result of one would indicate that parental income determines child income entirely. Krueger found that increasing immobility and increasing inequality are not uncorrelated trends.

Some of this depends on awareness. The knowledge and experience of inequality change perceptions and behavior. This awareness has different implications at different ends of the spectrum.

It is not an unfair characterization. It is not uncommon for the narrative around poverty to suggest that people are poor because of their bad decisions, but new research argues that the opposite is true. A review of the book in The Economist summarizes their work well. When an individual feels that they lack some vital resource—money, friends, time, calories—their mind operates in fundamentally distinct ways. The scarcity mindset brings two advantages:.

The scarcity mindset can weaken the mind as well. So, the work in Scarcity would suggest that being poor changes how people think and behave. The wealthy feel some discomfort with this consolidation of wealth, too, but for different reasons. Class is a complicated question.

It involves more than just income. It involves the cost of living, lifestyle choices, and lived experience. Over the past several decades, there's been a widening income gap between upper-income households and everyone else. The typical American income has grown only modestly in this century, and household wealth has not returned to its pre-recession level. Don't miss: Here's how much money you have to earn to be considered middle-class.

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