This is truly insane. And yet millionaires will look at this statistic and use it to justify calling themselves middle class.
I like to use quintiles to define the classes.
“Middle of what?” is a good question to ask. If you’re in the top 2%, or even 10%, you’re not middle class. More money than 90% of everyone else is not the middle class.
Flipping it around, if 0% means 100% of the country is richer than you, and 99% means 99% of the country is poorer than you…
- 0~20% is lower class.
- 20~40% is lower-middle class.
- 40~60% is middle class
- 60~80% is upper-middle class.
- 80~100% is upper class.
Now, I couldn’t find quick figures for wealth. But for income, middle class household income topped out at $94,000 in 2022. So a household making more than $100,000 is probably not middle class.
“But my household makes over $100,000/yr and we don’t live a middle class life style!”… that’s probably because you’ve been sold the idea that an upper[-middle] class lifestyle is actually “middle class”. It’s not. The lifestyle you’d have at about $80,000 household income is a middle class lifestyle.
“Well, I might make over $100,000/yr household income, but I’m definitely not middle class because i make less than that after tax!”…nope, these calculations are usually before tax. You aren’t middle class.
“This doesn’t apply to me. I have 3 kids and a dependent spouse, so my $100,000+ doesn’t go as far as a single person’s would!”…sorry, still not middle-class.
You’ve invented your own nonsense system that isn’t anything like how anyone uses the word.
This is not my understanding of the class system. It’s not divided evenly mathematically. Many years ago, this was most likely the case, but I would argue that unless you’re at least in the top third percentage for income, you probably aren’t living a “middle class” life. Features of what we used to call middle class, and I argue still should, are things like owning a home, going on vacations, and having a retirement account.
Reducing the idea of middle class to statistics normalizes things like living paycheck to paycheck because that’s what median income earners in this country do. That will never be middle class to me. That’s working class at best and more like working poor. I would love for everyone to have what I think of as a middle class life, but it’s sadly out of reach for most of us.
Middle class is not median income. It is a lifestyle that is enabled by income that fewer and fewer people can attain.
There are different schools of thought.
Some schools of thought say that anyone who has to work for their money (including business owners) are not upper class.
I like going with the statistical middle class because it’s less subjective regarding what it’s actually the middle.
