4 ms·

I'm confused, I just read the report in the article and everything you're saying seems to be wrong. Are you referring to a different report than this one? http:

by rm999 10y ago

I'm confused, I just read the report in the article and everything you're saying seems to be wrong. Are you referring to a different report than this one? http://www.urban.org/research/publication/growing-size-and-incomes-upper-middle-class http://www.urban.org/research/publication/growing-size-and-i... >The study appears to define "middle" as 90% of respondents Where do they do this? I think they just defined the lower boundary as the federal poverty level of 30k and the upper bound as where "rich" starts. Seems totally reasonable to me. > In the latter case, the study literally uses "people who identify as rich".... The obvious definition would be percentiles of income The study did use a percentile, it did not define rich people as "people who identify as rich". It looked at the approximate percentile of people who self-identify as rich (1-2%) and then found a round number (350k) that was in the range of that percentile (1.8%). This seems perfectly reasonable to me. And arguing about 1% vs 1.5% vs 2% is pointless because as I always say, arbitrary-in arbitrary-out; neither is more or less "correct" than the other. Apologies if we're referring to different reports.

mwsherman 10y ago
We’re referring to the same report and thanks for being rigorous on this. I certainly wouldn’t want to oversimplify. Using self-identified rich to derive an income baseline for rich still means “rich” is self-identified, no? It still puts us in the 1-2% range. I suggest that a measurable definition of rich should be those who are clearly above the vast majority of (say) incomes. Being richer than 80% or 90% of the population makes one closer to the top than the middle, so that seems like a better definition of “rich”. Agree that it is necessarily arbitrary, but I think such a definition is pretty conservative. Regarding the 90%, it’s from this line: > about 9 out of 10 respondents identified as being in one of the three parts of the middle class But re-reading, yes you’re right that the lower bound is not self-identified. But the author’s using the $30K number (from the poverty line) puts us at around the 5th percentile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States#Distribution_of_household_income_in_2014_according_to_US_Census_data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United... …which effectively puts the “middle” classes at 90% of the population. Again, thanks for the rigor and let me know if I have misread.
- rm999 10y ago
  >Using self-identified rich to derive an income baseline for rich still means “rich” is self-identified, no? I don't agree with this - I know a guy who makes 500k a year who considers himself "upper middle class", but this report would classify him (probably rightfully so) as rich. I think of the self-identified part as a principled way of defining something arbitrary. In my job I do a lot of analysis that needs to be boiled down to easy-to-understand metrics and definitions, and I personally feel this is the best approach when there isn't a good standard definition. A simple percentile wouldn't work here because the whole point of the study is looking at how income/class has changed over time. >the author’s using the $30K number (from the poverty line) puts us at around the 5th percentile Note that 30k is a normalized "family-of-three equivalent", which isn't the same as household income. It's actually a pretty neat way to remove size-of-family effects (which changed over the period of the analysis). Figure 2 shows about 20% of people would fall below middle class in 2014, and 24% in 1979. >Again, thanks for the rigor No worries and glad to, I love reading these kinds of studies!

by rm999 10y ago

mwsherman 10y ago

We’re referring to the same report and thanks for being rigorous on this. I certainly wouldn’t want to oversimplify. Using self-identified rich to derive an income baseline for rich still means “rich” is self-identified, no? It still puts us in the 1-2% range. I suggest that a measurable definition of rich should be those who are clearly above the vast majority of (say) incomes. Being richer than 80% or 90% of the population makes one closer to the top than the middle, so that seems like a better definition of “rich”. Agree that it is necessarily arbitrary, but I think such a definition is pretty conservative. Regarding the 90%, it’s from this line: > about 9 out of 10 respondents identified as being in one of the three parts of the middle class But re-reading, yes you’re right that the lower bound is not self-identified. But the author’s using the $30K number (from the poverty line) puts us at around the 5th percentile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States#Distribution_of_household_income_in_2014_according_to_US_Census_data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United... …which effectively puts the “middle” classes at 90% of the population. Again, thanks for the rigor and let me know if I have misread.

rm999 10y ago
>Using self-identified rich to derive an income baseline for rich still means “rich” is self-identified, no? I don't agree with this - I know a guy who makes 500k a year who considers himself "upper middle class", but this report would classify him (probably rightfully so) as rich. I think of the self-identified part as a principled way of defining something arbitrary. In my job I do a lot of analysis that needs to be boiled down to easy-to-understand metrics and definitions, and I personally feel this is the best approach when there isn't a good standard definition. A simple percentile wouldn't work here because the whole point of the study is looking at how income/class has changed over time. >the author’s using the $30K number (from the poverty line) puts us at around the 5th percentile Note that 30k is a normalized "family-of-three equivalent", which isn't the same as household income. It's actually a pretty neat way to remove size-of-family effects (which changed over the period of the analysis). Figure 2 shows about 20% of people would fall below middle class in 2014, and 24% in 1979. >Again, thanks for the rigor No worries and glad to, I love reading these kinds of studies!