The Quiet Rise of the American Upper-Middle Class
So different to the countries of old Europe, still weighed down by the legacies of feudalism. British politicians have often felt the need to urge the creation of a “classless” society, looking to America for inspiration as, what historian David Cannadine once described, “the pioneering and prototypical classless society.”
.. A key attraction in socialist systems — the main one, according to Orwell — is the eradication of class distinctions. There were few to eradicate in America. I am sure that one reason Downton Abbey and The Crown so delight American audiences is their depictions of an alien world of class-based status.
.. Class division becomes class stratification when these advantages — and, thus, status — endure across generations. In fact, as I’ll show, upper-middle-class status is passed down to the next generation more effectively than in the past and in the United States more than in other countries.
.. But I think some of the most popular efforts to date have diagnosed the class fracture incorrectly. Some analysts have let the upper-middle class off the hook (yes, that would be you) by pointing at the “super-rich” or “top 1 percent.” Take the new rock star of economic history, Thomas Piketty. For him, inequality is pretty much all about the top 1 percent.
.. This class, according to Murray, is defined as much by elitist culture — tastes and preferences — as by economic standing, and accounts for just 5 percent of the population.
.. Robert Putnam, in Our Kids, has a broader group in mind. “When I speak of kids from ‘upper class’ homes,” he writes, “I simply mean that at least one of their parents (usually both) graduated from college.” This represents, Putnam estimates, “about one third of the population.” Putnam’s concern is really with the bottom third, who he fears are being left behind.
.. my editors would have preferred me to use “upper class,” too. But I stuck with the longer, uglier, wonkier “upper-middle class.” This is not just semantics. If people are encouraged to think inequality is an upper-class problem, something important is lost. Most of us think of the upper class as the thin slice at the very top, but the tectonic plates are separating lower down. It is not just the top 1 percent pulling away, but the top 20 percent.
.. one in seven — adopts the “upper-middle class” description. This is quite similar to the estimates of class size generated by most sociologists, who tend to define the upper-middle class as one composed of professionals or managers, or around 15–20 percent of the working-age population.
.. America’s growing class division does not mean that categorical inequalities on the basis of race, ethnicity, and gender have disappeared. If anything, the relative position of black Americans has worsened in recent years