America's Four Middle Classes

[flashl]

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.

[DebJ]

1. I'd like to see this updated in December of this year.

[Truth4Justice]

4. Me too!

[valerief]

2. The only middlle classes nowadays are in middle school nt

[shireen]

3. it's actually hard to measure these categories

there's a geographical dependence. a person making $50k in Albuquerque, NM gets more bang for the buck than someone making $50k in San Francisco.