Defining the middle: The rhetoric and reality of class

An Episcopal priest who, with her husband, brings in about $65,000 a year tells Marketplace that they are lower middle class. A woman posting at dcurbanmom.com identifies her family as middle class, and their income is $100,000 a year. CNN talks to a man struggling to save for his son’s education who defines “middle class” as families with too much to qualify for federal Pell Grants—which is at most about $48,000 for a family of three. I was eligible for Pell Grants, and before that for subsidized school lunches, but I’ve always understood my family of origin to be middle class.

A majority of Americans consider themselves middle class, a recent Pew survey found, despite a wide variance in their earnings. So what does “middle class” mean if it applies to most of the country? And if we are all middle class now, what are the political and cultural implications?

Unlike middle class, the word poor has an official meaning. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ poverty formula is notoriously crude and inadequate, but at least it spits out a number: currently, an individual with annual earnings of less than $11,170 is considered poor ($23,050 for a family of four) and thus is eligible for various safety-net programs. (The Census Bureau uses a slightly different measure for statistical purposes.) Some services are available as well to those earning up to a given multiple of the poverty line—especially the 200 percent mark, under which a family is generally considered “low income.”