The Middle Class from a Sociological Viewpoint

The shrinking of the proportions of the population in the upper and lower levels is making the United States a middle-class nation. This does not imply a dead-level mediocrity composed of neurosis-ridden conformists. The significance rather is that we are necessarily learning to live with complex organization. T HE UNITED STATES is becoming a middle-class nation, if recent signs can be trusted. For decades we have been able to observe the decline of the one-family farm and falling proportions of unskilled laborers and low-paid service workers. Skilled workers still flourish, but are moving into relative prosperity and are gaining some of the characteristics of a middle class. Thus the old lower class is shrinking away and in time will probably become a minor and politically unimportant part of the population. We can all remember the once-fashionable assertion that "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer." If this was ever true of the United States it is certainly not so in recent times. The clear fact is that, in terms of a standard dollar value, all classes have become much richer over the past two decades, and the percentage gain has been over twice as large in the lowest fifth of the population as in the top twentieth. The total gain, for all classes 1935-36 to 1954, is 64 percent.' That is only money. How about length of life, which has always varied by social class. Current knowledge shows that life expectancy at birth has improved for all classes, but much more in the lowest economic levels, especially among males, for whom expectancy is always lower.2 In a recent paper on these matters Kurt Mayer has concluded "The redistribution of incomes which began in World War II has transformed the traditional income pyramid into a diamond.. ..." He goes on to say that in addition to the reduction in income and life chance differentials there are convergences among the classes in fertility behavior, in techniques of child-rearing, in patterns of consumer expenditures, and a general "blurring of traditional class differences in the style of life."3 The upper class, as a class, may also be dissolving in various ways into a middle level. There remain wealthy families, but these behave less and less like a class. Dynasties do not rule from an upper level; there are too many new fortunes for that. Prestige is no upper-class monopoly-it is distributed among parvenu entertainers, athletes, politicians, evangelists, authors, and other selfmade citizens. Nor is power a class matter; it is hard for a sociologist to take seriously the currently popular concept of a national power elite. Power in reality comes from the millions of voters and purchasers, organized and unorganized, in a complex flow of forces. 1 * A paper read at the twenty-third annual meeting of the Southern Sociological Society, Atlanta, Georgia, April 8, 1960. At the time he read the paper the author was President-Elect of the American Sociological Association. He is now President.-Editors. 1 Statistical Abstract of the United States 1958, Table 397, p. 315. 2 A. J. Mayer and Philip Hauser, "Class Differences in Expectation of Life at Birth," Revue de l'Institut International de Statistique, 18 (1950), p. 199. 3 Kurt Mayer, "Diminishing Class Differences in the United States," Kyklos: International Review for Social Sciences, XII (1959), Fasc. 4, p. 624. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.162 on Thu, 11 Aug 2016 05:27:13 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms