Professional Documents
Culture Documents
17
18 DREAM HOARDERS
as the thin slice at the very top, but the tectonic plates are sepa-
rating lower down. It is not just the top 1 percent pulling away,
but the top 20 percent.
In fact, as figure 2-1 shows, only a very small proportion of
U.S. adults1 to 2 percentdefine themselves as upper class.
A significant minorityabout one in sevenadopts the upper
middle class description. This is quite similar to the esti-
mates of class size generated by most sociologists, who tend to
define the upper middle class as one composed of professionals
and managers, or around 1520 percent of the working-age
population.
These self-definitions are a useful starting point, providing
some sense of how people see themselves on the class ladder.
But for analytical purposes, we need a more objective, and mea-
surable, yardstick. But which to choose? After all, Ive been at
pains to argue that class is made up of a subtle, shifting blend of
economic, social, educational, and attitudinal factors.
Income provides the cleanest instrument with which to dis-
sect the class distribution because it is easier to track over time
and to compare between individuals and families (perhaps also
because I work with a lot of economists). Income is also what
A Class Apart 21
2008
50
2014
40
30
20
10
NOT FOR REDISTRIBUTION
Lower Class Lower Middle Middle Class Upper Middle Upper Class
Class Class