I’m doing some policy writing and am working with a definitional problem, namely “define the middle class.”
James is single and makes $85,000/year. Is James middle class? Is your first question “Where does he live?”
Yes that is exactly my first question. $85,000 isn’t a lot in a state with high taxes, high property costs and high cost of living. Still probably middle class wherever the lives but where on the spectrum he falls depends on the area.
Middle class is a very broad definition anyway. There is a big gap between lower middle and upper middle but both are middle class.
By every single definition of Middle Class in the United States, a single person making $85k a year cannot be anything but Middle Class. Well, unless they had a few million in the bank.
Depends.
Do they live in a high cost of living area?
Do they have kids?
If the answer to both questions is no, then yes 85k is very comfortably middle class. When I earned half that I was quite comfortable financially because I live on a low COL area and do not have kids.
However if you have a family of 4 and live in Manhattan or San Francisco, then no 85k isn’t middle class.
I think in the rural county where I live $75,000 is considered the upper edge of middle class. At least, I looked it up recently on some web site that gave that value.
According to a site I found at random (http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/income-rank/index.html), $85K household income is about the 70th percentile. I’d call a single person household in the 70th percentile middle class, maybe upper middle class.
I never really thought of a number, but I’d probably peg the “upper class” as starting somewhere around the 80th percentile. Maybe. I dunno.
As others have noted, it also depends partly on how much money the person has in the bank or in other assets like investments or equity in real estate. I suppose someone might have lots of assets that aren’t very liquid, but they could lay their hands on a lot of money if they really needed to. That person probably isn’t middle class even if their day job pays a middle class salary.
I think $85k is middle class anywhere in the US; the location/cost-of-living data just changes were you are on the broad spectrum we use for middle class. There’s nowhere in the US where someone making $85k a year is considered poor.
I was earning about $76,000 when I retired 6 years ago in So Cal and living a very simple no frills life and not able to save all that much. I would say 85,000 in So Cal is solid middle class.
In the US, is “middle class” purely a function of income? Does the nature of your occupation, the nature of your parents’ occupations, the kind and extent of education that you had, etc, not enter into this at all?
The OP is talking about a single person, and my assumption is no dependents. Yes, I would classify $85K as solidly middle class anywhere in the US for a single person. I live in Chicago, and half that is more than enough for a single person, and I’d consider $40K solidly middle class, too, for a single person.
Yeah, pretty much. The general concept of middle-class is steady employment, a stable residence, and being able to cover at least regular living expenses.
Skilled trades are generally thought of as middle-class occupations, as well as professions like medicine and law. Education is considered an entry into the middle class, but it doesn’t make one middle-class by itself.
What your parents did has no bearing on anything, unless they’re subsidizing you in your adulthood.
I hope this isn’t too much of a hijack, but i think there are two different concepts of class in the US. There’s the one that’s just about money, and then there’s the one about lifestyle, interests, and sensibilities. My wife and I, for example, both have high paying jobs. We’re upper class in income. But our interests and tastes are pretty much straight from our middle class upbringing. (ETA: mostly. My wife is bound and determined that our kids get professional degrees. I’d be perfectly happy if they went into skilled trades. )
I presume wonky is interested in the financial sense of the term.
Just out of curiosity, what are your incomes and where is your general location? I’m only asking because it really does make a difference.
This is just my thinking, but I usually break incomes up into quintiles:
1st: lower class (poor)
2nd: lower middle class
3rd: middle class
4th: upper middle class
5th: upper class (wealthy)
But I agree that you need to consider geography. Where I live in CA, the medium home price is > $1M, whereas the average for the whole US is something like 1/5th of that. Now, everything isn’t 5x as expensive here, but many things are more expensive. A single guy making $85K would still be middle class, but he might be upper class in more rural states.
I had always thought as a general rule for a single person 50-75K/year was middle class, then 75-100K being upper middle class
I suppose it depends on how one spends their money, location and lifestyle choices.
I second this opinion. I think 50K is more of the solid middle class bracket though, 40k will get you by just fine though if you are single. despite what I posted above, I think 100K or more a year makes you ‘wealthy’.
I lived the past ten years on annual SS of $13 K, paying my own way with no external aid, public or private. Your wage earner could have lived like I did, with excess income of $72K. Even if invested indifferently, he would now have a million dollars. A person who, in one decade, goes from penniless to a millionaire, has hardly been “middle class”.
Do we define “middle class” by a person’s income, or by his consumption?
Agreed… the average median income in the U.S. is $31,000…making almost 3X as much places someone firmly in the category of “upper middle-class.”
Whether that person qualifies as “rich,” or not, depends largely on whether they already own a home. If they pay rent or have a mortgage, a huge chunk of that is going towards having a roof over their head.
The a homeowner making $85k will make more in 10 years than half of Americans will earn in all their years working, after rent/mortgage is deducted.
IMHO, an $85k earner is middle class no matter where in America he is.
Is the top quintile (two-income households making > $113,000) really “upper-class/wealthy” ? 
Is that even enough income to afford First Class on airplanes?