Middle class standards

Classification standards for the middle class

There are three standards for the classification of the middle class: 1. Classification of China’s middle class: The National Bureau of Statistics gives middle-class families based on per capita GDP and purchasing power. The annual income is between RMB 60,000 and RMB 500,000.

China’s middle-class wealth is allocated too heavily in real estate, as high as 79.5%, while the proportion of financial assets is too low, only 10.8%. Heiser said: "There are now about 220 million people in Asia (excluding Japan) who belong to the wealthy middle class, and more than half of them live in China.

This means that a quarter of the world's wealthy middle class speaks Chinese. This is Witness the rapid rise of China and will have a profound impact on the global financial market

2. The division of the American middle class: In terms of income, the average household in the United States has an annual income of US$30,000 to US$200,000. Considered to belong to the middle class, it is estimated that about 80% of Americans belong to the middle class. 3. By Indian standards, any family with an average annual after-tax income of 33,750 rupees to 150,000 rupees (approximately US$700-3,000) can be considered middle class. Family.

Extended information: The current situation of various international middle classes: 1. The British 1. The aristocratic middle class, whose wealth is second only to the elite, has considerable economic, social and cultural capital. 2. The new wealthy workers. Most are self-made, socially and culturally active new class, with middle income and economic capital level.

3. Technical middle class. This class has limited social aspects and limited pursuit of cultural life. It is the most typical. The British middle class owns a single-family house with three bedrooms worth nearly 280,000 pounds, one or two cars - usually Nissan or local British brands, and a deposit or investment of about 26,000 pounds at home. 2. Japan. 1. The annual income of Japan’s middle class is between 3 million and 6 million yen (approximately 190,000 and 380,000 yuan).

According to this data: the middle class accounts for 48.1% of the total population. But 80% of Japanese people still identify themselves as middle class. 2. Most Japanese people feel "confident" about their economic situation, but their way of spending money has changed, and they save more on "entertainment expenses" and "entertainment expenses". "Food, drink and clothing expenses"

Japanese society was originally more like an apple, basically everyone was middle class, there was not much difference.

Reference: Baidu Encyclopedia - Middle Class. .

What is the standard for the middle class in 2017?

There are usually two criteria for classifying the middle class, one is occupation, and the other is per capita or family income.

There is a lot of controversy in distinguishing the middle class based on occupation. Just like the staff of state agencies, directors and division chiefs are obviously difficult to compare with general staff and clerks. "Important" agency staff such as the staff of the Industrial and Commercial Bureau and the Taxation Bureau are not the same as the staff of the Industrial and Commercial Bureau and the Taxation Bureau. The gap in income and social status among "general" agency staff, such as those working in the Earthquake Bureau, the Archives Bureau, and the Veteran Cadre Bureau, is probably not the same as that of IT technicians. Some may live in villas and drive foreign cars, while others may live in villas and drive foreign cars. You can only eat instant noodles every day and squeeze into the bus.

More people, including economists, tend to use income as the only or main criterion for classifying the middle class. Economic income is used as the criterion to distinguish who is middle class and who is not, and there are still many uncertainties and quantitative confusions.

For example, in the United States, some people believe that anyone with an average annual income of US$30,000 to US$100,000 belongs to the middle class. By this standard, more than 95% of people in the United States should belong to the middle class. Others believe that the average annual income standard for middle-class Americans should be between US$25,000 and US$100,000. Anyone with an average annual income within this range can be considered middle class.

By this measure, the American middle class makes up about 80% of the population. In the United States, known as the stronghold of the middle class, the criteria for distinguishing the middle class are still so confusing, not to mention other parts of the world.

Take India as an example. According to the Indian Policy Research Center, India currently has about 300 million middle class people. India's "National Council of Applied Economic Research" is the developer and publisher of India's middle class standards. The standards for India's middle class issued by it are: average annual after-tax income between 33,750 rupees and 150,000 rupees (approximately US$700-3,000) , the current ratio of the US dollar to the rupee is about 1:48.5) families can be regarded as middle-class families.

Based on this calculation, in 2001, 60 million families in India had become middle-class families. Based on a family of five, India currently has a middle class of 300 million people.

From this point of view, you can have as many middle classes as you want in a country. Because of the lack of unified standards, it is very arbitrary. According to the standards of India's middle class, if the average annual income of a household is US$700, it can be considered a middle-class family. According to the current foreign exchange rate in my country, US$700 is equivalent to about 6,000 yuan. When divided among a family of five, the annual per capita income is about It’s only about 1,200 RMB, which is an average of 100 RMB per person per month.

With such an income level, it may be difficult to even have enough to eat in many places in China, let alone “middle class” or not. When the U.S. Department of Commerce announced that India was one of the top ten emerging markets in the world, it said that India's current middle class has reached about 175 million people (almost half less than the estimate of relevant Indian agencies). In the future, these Each middle-class person in India still needs to buy at least a TV, a tape recorder, a pressure cooker, a ceiling fan, a bicycle, and a watch; 2/3 of them also need to buy a moped and a color TV , an electric iron, a food mixer and a sewing machine; less than half of the people want to buy a refrigerator... "What a huge consumer market this will be!" In the eyes of others, this is more like American black humor. .

What is the standard for middle class?

There are usually two criteria for dividing the middle class, one is occupation, and the other is per capita or family income.

1. Occupation. There is a lot of controversy in distinguishing the middle class by occupation. Just like the staff of state agencies, it is obviously difficult to compare directors and division chiefs with general staff and clerks. "Important" agency staff For example, the gap in income and social status between the staff of the Industrial and Commercial Bureau and the Taxation Bureau and the staff of "general" agencies such as the Seismological Bureau, the Archives Bureau, and the Veteran Cadre Bureau may not be the same. 2. Per capita or family income, the middle class in one country and another country have different personal or family income standards, so the classification is also different. Because there is no unified standard, the arbitrariness is very high.

Extended information: Popular definition of the middle class. Most of them are engaged in mental work, mainly rely on wages and salaries to make a living. They are generally well-educated, have professional knowledge, strong professional ability and corresponding family spending power; Have a certain amount of leisure, pursue quality of life, and generally have certain management and control rights over their labor and work objects. At the same time, most of them have good citizenship, public moral awareness and corresponding cultivation.

Since the average social wage income in our country is not high at this stage, and the income of most workers is below the average, the social distribution pattern is far from the "olive shape" of developed countries with a market economy, but has a larger bottom. , a "pyramid shape" with a tapered middle and upper part. Based on this, Su Hainan believes that it is not appropriate to simply apply the international standards for determining the middle class or middle-income groups. Therefore, many scholars, including Qing Lianbin, a professor at the Central Party School of the Communist Party of China, believe that there is no so-called middle class in China at this stage.