Is $400k Middle Class? Income Quintiles: 2021 Update

2021 is determined to deprive us of nice things, so some tired click bait has been making the rounds again: claiming that a $400k income somehow qualifies as middle class in some coastal cities.

I don't have to link to this junk, right? No, I don't. We won't. We don't have to give wealthy misanthropes the attention they thirst for.

Still, anytime that popular media goes off the rails with definitions of the middle class, it's a good time to center our understanding on what people actually earn in this country. As always, I'm using my favorite, easy to understand method: income quintiles.

Median Income, Middle Class

The Census Bureau came out with a new report last week, which gives me a chance to write about my favorite topics: the middle class, and middle class income.

It's such a charged term: middle class. Everyone has an idea of what it means, even if we don't agree on a single definition. But a median household is a decent place to start, as no matter what your definition of "middle class", I bet the median household fits within it.

So let's take a look at what that median household earns.

Your Purchases Can't Buy You Class

Another Monday, another post chock-full of middle class goodness.

The notion that our economic class is defined, not by our income or our wealth, but by our purchases, is fairly prevalent. If you own a house, or a second car, and take the family on a vacation now and again, maybe that means you're middle class. If you rent and take the bus and don't get time away from work, maybe you're not. Middle class people wear certain types of clothes. They eat certain types of food.

This purchase-defined class structure has a historical basis, and it's been portrayed predictably, and inaccurately, throughout the years in television and in movies.

The Middle Class & Income by Location

Sad Cayenne doesn't think she's in the middle class.

As we're in an election year, the two major party candidates are talking about how we need to improve things for the middle class. It makes sense. There's a great deal of mythology about the middle class in America, and it's a deep well for politicians to draw from. It doesn't hurt that we still don't have a consistent definition of what it even means to be middle class, despite the efforts of this little blog.

Nonetheless, the middle class exists, even if we can't agree on how to define it, and, somehow, everyone thinks they're middle class. While I like the idea of defining the middle class in terms of household income quintiles, most of us can agree that the middle class is a relative term, not an absolute one. To be in the middle, you need something on either side.