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.

Sociological definition

Some modern theories of political economy consider a large middle class to be a beneficial, stabilising influence on society, because it has neither the possibly explosive revolutionary tendencies of the lower class, nor the absolutist tendencies of an entrenched upper class. Most sociological definitions of middle class follow Max Weber. Here the middle class is defined by a similar income level as semi-professionals, or business owners; by a shared culture of domesticity and sub-urbanity; and, by a level of relative security against social crisis in the form of socially desired skill or wealth. While 95 per cent of Americans identify themselves as middle-class, using the measures of sociology the reality seems different. Some of these individuals are clearly lower or upper class.

Related Topics:
Political economy - Society - Revolution - Lower class - Absolutist - Upper class - Sociological - Max Weber - Income - Semi-professional - Business - Culture - American

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Threats to the US middle class

In the 1990s and 2000s, many feared that the spreading wealth gap would lead to a "collapse of the middle" in American society. A modern threat to the middle class is downsizing in many sectors of the American economy, competition from lower paid foreign workers and contractors, and the systematic elimination of unionised labour.

Related Topics:
1990s - 2000s - Downsizing

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In contrast, the British author Alexander Deane thinks that the middle class is not under threat, but rather is the cause of problems itself: in his approach, economic considerations are secondary to moral ones, and the UK middle class is not carrying out its responsibilities as it should

Related Topics:
Alexander Deane - UK

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