Middle class

The middle class refers to people neither at the top nor bottom of a social hierarchy. In today's usage, the term is often applied to people who have a degree of economic independence, but not a great deal of social influence or power in their society. For example, in the United States, a small business owner who owns her own home and cleans it herself would generally be described as "middle class." This would be in contrast to a lower class person who relies upon the good graces of an employer and landlord, as well as to an upper class person who can live off investments and pay someone else to clean their house for them. Such finance-based differentiation originates in the US version of the class system. Other organisations of upper, middle, and lower classes are based on behavioural and/or historic grounds, or economic relations.

History and evolution of the term

The introductory example given above will not be accepted by all people. The term "middle class" has a long history, and has had many, sometimes contradictory, meanings. It was once defined by exception as an intermediate social class between the nobility and the peasantry of Europe. While the nobility owned the countryside, and the peasantry worked the countryside, a new bourgeoisie (literally "town-dwellers") arose around mercantile functions in the city.

Related Topics:
Social class - Nobility - Peasantry - Europe - Bourgeoisie

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Descending from this distinction, "middle class" once referred in the United Kingdom to people who were actually quite wealthy, and sometimes powerful, but who lacked an hereditary lordship. Throughout the twentieth century, the titled aristocracy of the United Kingdom became less homogenous. This was because of the increasingly eclectic background of new creations, most of which were politically driven by the so-called middle class, and the declining power of the House of Lords relative to the House of Commons after the Parliament Act 1911. So far as the hereditary element of class was concerned, the titled upper class became less numerous because of the near-cessation of new hereditary creations after the Life Peerages Act 1958. This was coupled with the natural rate of extinction of existing hereditary titles and the near-abolition of the hereditary element of the House of Lords at the end of the twentieth century. At this point, hereditary titles are in no way the key to being "upper class" although they do lend a distinctive panache within the upper class.

Related Topics:
United Kingdom - House of Lords - House of Commons - Parliament Act 1911 - Life Peerages Act 1958

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In early industrial capitalism the middle class was defined primarily as white collar workers—those who worked for wages (like all workers), but did so in conditions that were comfortable and safe compared to the conditions for blue collar workers of the "working class". The expansion of the phrase "middle class" in the United States appears to have been predicated in the 1970s by the decline of labour unions and the entrance of formerly domestic women into the public work force. A great number of pink collar jobs arose, where people could avoid the dangerous conditions of blue collar work and therefore claim to be "middle class" even if they were making far less money than a unionized blue collar worker.

Related Topics:
Capitalism - White collar - Blue collar - Working class - 1970s - Labour union - Pink collar

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By the end of the twentieth century, more people identified themselves as middle class than as lower or "working" class, with statistically insignificant numbers identifying themselves as upper class. Hence, even the British Labour Party, which grew out of the organised labour movement and originally drew almost all of its support from the working class, re-invented itself under Tony Blair as 'New Labour', a party competing with the Conservative Party for the votes of the middle class as well as the working class. The size of the middle class depends on how it is defined, whether by education, wealth, environment of upbringing, genetic relationships, social network, etc. These are all related, though far from deterministically dependent. The following factors are often ascribed in modern usage to a "middle class":

Related Topics:
Labour Party - Tony Blair - New Labour - Conservative Party - Wealth - Genetic - Social network

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• Achievement of tertiary education, including all financiers, lawyers, doctors and clergymen regardless of their leisure or wealth.
• Belief in bourgeois values, such as high rates of house or long-term lease ownership and jobs which are perceived to be "secure". In the United States, and in the United Kingdom, politicians typically target the votes of the middle classes.
• Lifestyle. In the United Kingdom, social status has been less directly linked to wealth than in the United States, and has also been judged by pointers such as accent, manners, place of education and the class of a person's circle of friends and acquaintances. Often in the United States, the middle class are the most eager participants in pop culture. The second generation of new immigrants will often enthusiastically forsake their traditional folk culture as a sign of having arrived in the middle class.
• Low rates of union membership.
• A middle range income. What is considered "middle range" can be quite broad, especially since most Americans yearn to be known as "middle class". Though an average yearly income in the United States is about $30,000, incomes all the way from $20,000 up to $75,000 a year are generally considered middle class. Around 1980, when asked what level of personal income would qualify as middle-class, George H. W. Bush replied: $50,000. In fact, only 5 percent of the U.S. population was making that level of income at the time.
• A net worth- what a person's total material assets are worth, minus their debt. Most economists define "middle class" citizens as those with net worths of between $25,000 (low-middle class) to $250,000. Those with net worths between $250,000 and $500,000 typically are categorized as upper-middle-class.