What is middle class?

[EsotericEnigma]

How much does a typical American make a year?

Pretty simpe, but actual numbers are surprisingly hard to find.

Also, how much can a person make in America and still be considered in poverty?

[tanookie]

Not that simple though...

What is a 'typical American?' To take that across all of the United States and get a consensus of income is also difficult because you have to factor in cost of living. For example we live in MA and here starter homes in our town are about $300,000. Contrast that with some of the places in the midwest with starter homes for $60,000. Or look at the Bay Area in CA where starter homes are closer to $500,000.

Middle class in those areas would look very different.

I believe the official poverty line is somewhere around $15,000/year. That 15,000 might be survivable in some places and not enough for just the grocery bill in another.

[Atrael]

According to the the Census Bureau (http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income03.html) median income is around $43,000 per year. Google is your friend

[Ephemera]

I believe the official poverty line is somewhere around $15,000/year. That 15,000 might be survivable in some places and not enough for just the grocery bill in another.

I think that's the poverty line for a family of three or four since I'm currently living well enough, if a bit spartanly, on that much a year and am single with no dependents.

[cher3]

It was recently claimed that a single parent supporting two children here is the San Diego area would need to make about $40,000 to afford the basics.

[Ludovic]

Historically, "middle class" meant being rich enough to afford at least one servant. These days, however, we are mobile enough and services are specialized enough that most people who theoretically could afford a full-time servant nonetheless get their services from specialists who do not live with them.

If you assume several things:

-- A non-expensive area of the US
-- A single-income family with several children (to keep parity with the historical definition)
-- Ability to afford both a live-in servant and the extra housing for them

I would say that solid middle class is around $70K a year. Depending on the area of the country and size of family, middle class can start in the $40s (not that they WOULD have a servant, just that they could afford one.)

Granted, definitions of things change: nowadays the average American thinks of "middle class" as being the median income. But at least the historical one has the advantage of having a good working definition.

[LSLGuy]

Interesting coincidence. The New York Times had an editorial on this topic today.

See http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/opinion/08herbert1.html?oref=login&th. You may have to fill out a registration, but it's free & I've never gotten any spam from them.

The pertinent statistics quoted in the editorial are The study, jointly sponsored by the Annie E. Casey, Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, will show that 9.2 million working families in the United States - one out of every four - earn wages that are so low they are barely able to survive financially.

"Our data is very solid and shows that this is a much bigger problem than most people imagine," said Brandon Roberts, one of the authors of the report, which is to be formally released on Tuesday. The report found that there are 20 million children in these low-income working families.

For the purposes of the study, any family in which at least one person was employed was considered a working family. Very wealthy families were included.

The median income for a family of four in the U.S. is $62,732. According to the study, a family of four earning less than $36,784 is considered low-income. A family of four earning less than $18,392 is considered poor. The 9.2 million struggling families cited by the report fell into one of the latter two categories. And those families have one-third of all the children in American working families