With the election of an African American as President, many would think that the question of affirmative action and equal opportunity has been finally laid to rest in the United States. This perception may be true for the proponents of affirmative action, whom over the years believe that the...

This paper aims to understand why and by how much perceptions of social ranking differ from objective rankings based on self-reported income. It focuses on the middle class because persons of all income levels show a strong bias towards identifying themselves as middle class. Using a rich...

This paper presents a three class growth model with labor market conflict. The classes are workers, a middle management middle class, and a "top" management capitalist class. The model introduces personal income distribution that supplements conventional concerns with functional income...

Measurement of the middle class has recently come to the center of policy debate in middle-income countries as they search for the potential engines of growth and good governance. This debate assumes, first, that there is a meaningful definition of class, and second, that the thresholds which...

This paper empirically applies the statistical approaches to the phenomenon of polarization generated by Esteban, et al. (1999) and Gradín (2000) in order to quantify the evolution of the middle class in Mexico and the role of various household attributes in the formation of groups during...

Purpose – Using official and household survey data, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the size of middle class in rural China, its trend and geographical distribution. Determinants or drivers of changes in the size of middle class are explored. Design/methodology/approach – An absolute...

In this paper, we revisit 'what and who' is middle class in South Africa using data collected in the 2008 National Income Dynamics Study. First we consider how to identify the middle class based on two broad definitions adopted in the international literature: a middle class defined by the...