The Middle Class: Methodological Challenges and Heuristic Potential
The Middle Class: Methodological Challenges and Heuristic Potential

Summary/Abstract: The article analyses the advantages and shortcomings of various approaches to defining and studying the middle class. The application of a statistical approach that classifies the population on the basis of received earnings and material wealth has the advantage of covering all income groups and enabling the measurement of their relative weights in society. However, this approach does not permit analysing differing cultural preferences, values and political choices – i.e., the internal heterogeneity of the income groups. Education level is a basic factor of internal differentiation of the middle class, and enables studying upward mobility in society and distinguishing the lower from the upper middle class. The members of the lower middle class benefit most from the elimination of unequal access to education and reduction of social-origin-based recruitment to managerial positions. The article also examines the approach that takes into account the subjective identification of people with the middle class, the middle class’s comparison with the precariat and the poor, but also with the affluent strata of society. Sociologists prefer to consider the socio-professional differentiation of the middle class, as it makes possible an integral analysis of groups within the middle class that are characterized by shared status in terms of employment and education, and by the proximate sizes of their income chances. The article stresses the importance of equal opportunities policies and the support to the enterpreneurs.

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