4 ms·
I would guess that they're defining "upper middle class" via income quintiles rather than via lifestyle. Those numbers roughly line up with the boundaries for
by everforward 4y ago
I would guess that they're defining "upper middle class" via income quintiles rather than via lifestyle. Those numbers roughly line up with the boundaries for the 4th quintile in 2017, 77k-126k. 2020's fourth quintile was 85k-141k.
> I wouldn’t consider that an upper middle class lifestyle.
I don't know that the conceptual upper middle class lifestyle actually matches the reality anymore. I think that's true of most quintiles. The upper middle class lives like the middle class used to, the middle class lives like the lower middle class used to, etc.
That "upper middle class lifestyle" upshifted and is the domain of the lower rungs of the top quintile now.
- corrral 4y agoDefinitions for this are all over the place. Fussell's "upper middle class" lifestyle couldn't be stably maintained by households under the top quintile (probably not under the top 10%, even), nor could the upper-middle (also upper, but largely upper-middle) described in the jokey-but-fairly-accurate Official Preppy Handbook, and those books are ~40 years old now. For one thing, both paint decent-or-better private prep school as key for that class, and that's never really been within the reach of the lower four quintiles, to say nothing of the other things you'll need to spend money on to stay in that class.
- danaris 4y agoAnd this is, in fact, the realized effect of the squeezing of the entire middle class over the past decades.