'What Qualifies a Household's Living Standard as Middle Class?' A Note

Abstract

This paper takes up the much argued-over term "middle class" and specifically the standard of consumption the term may be said to denote. In the history this paper recounts it notes the ambiguities and evolution of the term, but holds that in the post-World War II United States it denoted a certain minimum standard of comfort, security and opportunity for one's children (home and car ownership, health insurance, college for the children, retirement, and a margin of safety and resources for superfluities on a single income). The paper also argues, on the basis of the cost of the requisite amenities, the actual distribution of income and other evidence that far from being some broad societal norm all this is actually accessible only to a few, a fact which may be finding some reflection in the country's shifting politics.