- Part 1: The middle class is dying? Nobody got the memo
- Part 2: Where does the middle class begin?
- Part 3: Is middle class an income or an attitude?
- Part 4: No. 1 middle-class virtue? Hard work
- Part 5: The sandwich generation is fed up
- Part 6: Get Happy: Think like an immigrant
- Part 7: No room for quitters in the middle class
The American middle class has been declining for decades. But even in its diminished state, presidential candidates still play to it, promising to protect middle-class families, defend middle-class values and cut middle-class taxes. So what is this decaying economic group, and who’s part of it? The AJC polled residents in 10 metro counties to find out.
Why this topic? Why now?
If there are two words every American will be sick of hearing by Election Day, 2016, they’re “middle class.”
But who is in the middle class? What does it mean to be middle class? There is no accepted definition, no single equation for determining who belongs. It’s something virtually every American aspires to, and it’s widely hailed as the lifeblood of our democracy.
But it’s devilishly hard to get your arms around.
In a sense, the middle class is whatever people say it is. So the AJC polled residents of 10 metro Atlanta counties, asking what middle class means to them. We also talked to economists, social scientists and other experts, and had in-depth conversations with a diverse group of metro Atlanta residents.
Together, they painted a fascinating portrait of this vital but elusive slice of our community.
Want a simple answer? Good luck with that
There’s no official way to determine who is middle class – nothing analogous to the federal “poverty line.” Experts have proposed a number of formulas; the answers they yield are different enough to make your head spin.
Most approaches start by arraying all households in a given geographic area (say, a county) along a continuum, from the lowest to the highest incomes.
Some formulas then find the median, or mid-point, where half of households have higher incomes and half have lower incomes. They multiply the median by specific values to establish the upper and lower bounds of the middle class. One formula uses 67 percent as the lower bound and 200 percent as the upper bound. Another uses 75 percent as the lower bound and 150 percent as the upper bound.
Let’s take Cobb County as an example. The estimated median household income, based on the three most recent years of census data, is $62,940. By the first formula, a household is middle class if its income falls between $42,170 and $125,880. The second formula sets the boundaries at $47,205 and $94,410.
Other approaches divide the income continuum into fifths, with an equal number of households in each group, or quintile. The narrowest definition of the middle class encompasses just the middle quintile. The broadest includes everything but the bottom and top quintiles.
For Cobb County, the narrow approach defines middle-class income as $49,844 to $77,918. The broad definition encompasses household incomes of $27,443 to $124,608. Quite a difference.
(The average household size is roughly three persons. That’s the size the AJC poll asked respondents to use in defining their own upper and lower bounds of middle-class income.)
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