What Does ‘Middle Class’ Even Mean?

The Atlantic: 

If you had to place yourself in a socioeconomic class, where would you land? That’s a tricky and personal question for most Americans. Education, income, and even parental wealth can all factor into class status, but the borders of each group can still be hard to parse. That’s because socioeconomic class structure in the U.S. is a nebulous thing that can be as much about perception and comparison as it is about measurable metrics, like money.

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The shift is likely less about a downward economic trend than it is about feelings of runaway inequality. “What might be happening is that people are thinking about the state of our society and the divisions between people’s levels of wealth,” according to Michael Kraus an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Illinois.

Read the whole story: The Atlantic