Despite all the discussions surrounding the middle class, who fits into that group isn’t clear.
Sociologists and economists don’t agree on a definition and various polls show that when asked, more than nine out of 10 Americans put themselves in the middle.
Vice President Joe Biden, who heads the administration’s Middle Class Task Force, defines middle-class families as those unable to miss more than two or three paychecks without serious financial difficulties. But that would also describe the poorest households.
A simplistic definition of the middle class is the group between the lowest and highest income brackets.
• Incomes for the middle 20 percent of U.S. households ranged from $39,100 to $62,000 in 2007, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That group covers 23.4 million households.
• The 60 percent not in the lowest or highest brackets contains 70.1 million households with incomes from $20,000 to $100,000. Both blue-collar and professional workers fall in this group.
• People over 65 years of age, those living alone and households where three or more people are holding a job are more likely to fall below middle class.
• Homeowners and renters are fairly close in numbers in the middle tiers, although renters are more concentrated in the lower middle, while homeowners the upper middle.
• Rural residents are more likely to be middle class, while urban populations skew to both the high and low ends.
Compiled by Aldo Svaldi and Barry Osborne
