As always, the linguistic and cultural divide between US and UK is significant in what "middle class" means. At no point in American history was "2 weeks of ho

As always, the linguistic and cultural divide between US and UK is significant in what "middle class" means. At no point in American history was "2 weeks of holiday abroad" a norm for middle class Americans. In 1990, only 4% of Americans even had a passport. By the year 2000 that had grown to 17%. Today it's 42%. That means Americans today are 10x more likely to have a passport for international travel than they were 30 years ago. In other words, it would have been incredibly rare for a middle class family in the 1980s to go to Europe for vacation. Meanwhile, it's not that rare for a lower-income American to go to Mexico or the Caribbean today.