Nearly half of Americans earning $100,000 or more think they're middle class - and it shows that class in America isn't just about money
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Edward Berthelot/Getty Images Wealth is all relative, especially when it comes to class.
Class in America isn't just about money.
A recent survey by INSIDER and Morning Consult, which polled 4,400 Americans, asked respondents to define their current financial situation by selecting poor, working class, middle class, upper middle class, or affluent (or don't know) - and how they identified class-wise didn't always align with how much they earn annually.But the class with the biggest difference in income levels is the middle class - 36% earn less than $50,000, 18% earn $100,000, and around 50% earn $50,000 to $100,000.
Read more: More than one-third of millennials earning at least $100,000 a year consider themselves middle classThat's how much money those in certain classes earn annually; flipping this, we also looked at how those in certain income brackets identify their class. Most notably, nearly 42% of those earning $100,000 or more think they're middle class - around 36% think they're upper middle class, and only 6% think they're affluent.
Debt levels might also explain why some respondents' income levels seem off from the class they think they're in - if they're earning a lot of money, but putting it towards debt (or overspending, which can lead to some kinds of debt in the first place), they may not necessarily feel rich.
About 70% of the working class has credit card debt and roughly 65% each of the poor and middle class do, compared to slightly more than half each of the upper middle class and affluent.
Read more: Nearly half of indebted millennials say college wasn't worth it, and the reason why is obviousLower classes are also more likely to bear the weight of student loans. More than half each of the middle class, upper middle class, and affluent have never had student loans, compared to less than half each of poor and working class.
Of those who do have student loans, more of the middle class, upper class, and affluent have paid them off than the working class and the poor. Of the latter two groups, more than 30% each currently have student loans, compared to less than 20% of the middle class, and 10% each of the upper middle class and affluent.
It makes sense then, that the lower down the class ranks you get, the more likely it is that people don't expect to ever own a home. Nearly half of the poor and working class don't expect to own a home, compared to nearly 37% of the middle class and upper middle class and 9% of the affluent.
In other expectations, more of the poor expect to never retire, while more of the affluent expect to retire at a younger age - by 55. And the higher the class, the more likely they are to think they're financially faring better off than they thought they'd be 10 years ago.Copyright © 2021. Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved.For reprint rights. Times Syndication Service.
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