The following is from Gallup News.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Fifty-four percent of Americans identify as part of the middle class, including 39% who say they are “middle class” and 15% “upper-middle class.” Another 31% consider themselves “working class” and 12% “lower class.”
Just 2% of U.S. adults characterize themselves as “upper class.”
These readings are generally in line with those since the Great Recession. Before then, Americans were typically more likely to self-identify as members of the middle or upper-middle class and less likely to say they belonged to the working or lower class.
The latest findings are from Gallup’s annual Economy and Personal Finance poll, conducted April 1-22. This is the 11th reading on this measure from the annual survey since 2002.
From 2002 through 2006, an average of 61% of Americans considered themselves middle or upper-middle class; however, that dropped to 56% in 2008, at the start of the Great Recession — and since then, the figure has averaged 53%.
Meanwhile, the combined percentage of U.S. adults identifying as working or lower class has increased from an average of 37% pre-recession to 45% since.
Social class identification has generally been stable since 2019, even as Americans’ ratings of the U.S. economy have grown significantly worse. (Continued…)
Link to article here.
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As Bill Clinton once infamously said, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/there-are-many-definitions-of-middle-class-heres-ours/
Most people prefer to think of themselves as “temporarily disadvantaged” and don’t like to think of themselves as “poor” even when they ARE poor. For the same reason, most stupid people don’t like to think of themselves as being stupid, and most ugly people don’t like to think of themselves as ugly.
Moral: Even when nobody else will believe you, you can always lie to yourself.
I’d say there’s as little tendency to think of one’s self as rich, no matter one’s income or lifestyle -and paticularly if one is a leftist – as the reverse. Both “rich” and “poor” have resonances many may not be prepared to stomach concerning one’s self.
Per the Pew Research Center, middle class income for 2023 would be between a little less than $40,000 and a little less than $120,000 – which is quite a range.
“54% of Americans identify as ‘middle class’ ”
Oddly, just about the same percentage of Americans believe in ghosts. The connection is easy to understand, and was explained by Harry Nilsson in The Pointed Man:
“The thing is, you see what you wanna see – and you hear what you wanna hear. You dig?”
https://genius.com/Harry-nilsson-the-pointed-man-narration-lyrics