First, I apologize. I really didn’t intend for the tone to be attacking, and I am sorry that was how it sounded. I certainly wasn’t intentionally “suggesting [you were] somehow trying to hide or deny” any of the issues. I thought it was worth noting that the initial characterization was plausibly misleading, given that the sole indicator of being a “nice middle class area” seemed to be percentage of people with PhDs. Your defense was that it was no more than 3x the number of PhDs, but that doesn’t mean top 1⁄3, a point which you later agreed to. And after further discussion, I made and you checked an object level prediction I made, so I ceded the point.
Despite ceding the main earlier point, I continued the discussion, since I think the terms and definitions have gotten very confused by citing various incompatible sources and citing isolated sections of articles. And the same way that I have picked specific things to focus on responding to, you have picked many things I have said which you ignore. That’s fine—but my responses were not an isolated demand for rigor; I have made concrete claims and acknowledged those which were refuted, and you have raised points which I have responded to.
So again, I am not disputing your neighborhood, which I conceded I initially thought was more affluent than it is. Despite that, there is plenty you have now said characterizing classes, in responses, which I think should be clarified if you want to continue. Again, this doesn’t reflect on your earlier claim about you child’s school, but your defense of the position has been confusing to me, at least. For example, you compare $166,000/year in the US, which is the top 15% there, to incomes in your neighborhood—then note that £80k (i.e. $110k) in the UK is the top 5%. You don’t say anything about the equivalent income in the UK. I again agree that your neighborhood is not in the top 15%, but the top 15% there in the UK is £46k. (not $166k, i.e. £118k) The actual average income in your area, £36k, is in the top 25%. (I would suspect the incomes for those with children in the area is higher, but again, not near the top of upper middle class) Finally, the specific examples of upper middle class that you cite—Cameron, etc. are discussing their family backgrounds, not their current status.
I don’t actively “want to continue”, in that it seems to me that the whole content of this discussion is you saying or implying that I’ve badly misrepresented how affluent my area is, and me pointing out in various ways that that isn’t so.
However, your last paragraph seems once again like an accusation of inconsistency, so let me clarify.
“Upper middle class” means different things in different places. In the US, “class” is largely (but not wholly) about wealth. In the UK, “class” is largely (but not wholly) about social background. These are less different than that makes them sound because the relevant differences in social background are mostly driven by the wealth of one’s forebears, and in both societies there is a strong correlation between that and one’s own wealth.
The US has a more wealth-based notion of class and is also richer. So being “upper middle class” in the US means a level of wealth that would make you quite rich in the UK.
The UK has a more social-background-based notion of class, which in particular is strongly influenced by the existence of a (statistically very small) aristocratic class. So “upper class” in the UK means a smaller, more-elite fraction of the population than in the US, and “upper middle class” is pulled in the same direction. So being “upper middle class” in the UK typically (but not always, because of the wealth/background distinction) means being at a distinctly higher percentile of wealth than it does in the US.
The combined effect of these things is to put the typical “upper middle class” person or family at something like the same level of wealth in the two countries, although there’s plenty of fuzziness and variability.
(Perhaps I have by now made it clear that I do have some idea how social class works in the UK, enough so that you might believe me if I tell you that (1) I am definitely lower-upper-middle-class and (2) my household income is somewhere around the 95th percentile.)
So, issue 1 is that you’re wanting to call my neighbourhood “upper middle class” even though the people here don’t fit either the UK or the US notion of “upper middle class”, because you think it matches the definition you’d get if you applied the US-based notion directly to the UK despite the substantial differences between the two societies.
This would be (annoying but) excusable given that your main point was to suggest that my daughter’s school may be more atypical than I was claiming. But there’s more.
That percentile-ranking tool is not ranking individuals, it is ranking areas of the country. Areas vary less than individuals do, and (e.g.) an 80th-percentile area is not composed mostly of 80th-percentile individuals. On the other hand, terms like “upper middle class” are descriptions of individuals and families, and only secondarily of areas. If calling an area “upper middle class” (or “upper class”, or whatever) means anything, it should mean an area whose people are mostly of the class in question.
Almost no areas are “upper class” or even “upper middle class”.
(Perhaps an analogy may help. Suppose you have an area where the Jewish population is at the 95th percentile of areas in the country. Would you call it “very Jewish”? You probably shouldn’t, because I bet that 95th-percentile population is still <5%. I submit that “upper middle class” is like “Jewish” in this respect.)
In a typical 80th-percentile area, most people are middle-middle-class. That’s unusual; in a more typical area a large fraction will be lower on the socioeconomic scale. How might you describe such an area? Well, maybe as a “nice middle-class area”, for instance. Which happens to be exactly the term I used.
“But £36k is distinctly higher than a typical middle-middle-class salary in the UK.” It’s not all that much higher; median UK household income is £30k. Second, the £36k figure is a mean, not a median. Mean incomes are always higher than median incomes. UK mean household income turns out to be about £37k, if I’ve done my calculations correctly. Both the area mean of ~£36k and the national mean of ~£37k are described as “equivalised” and I don’t know whether that means the same thing in both cases, but the point is that this area is in fact about as well-off as the UK as a whole. No contradiction with the 80th-percentile thing; most areas are (when you calculate in terms of means) a bit poorer than average and a few are substantially richer.
So, issue 2 is that you’re taking terms that describe individuals and applying them to areas in a profoundly misleading way. You can call an 80th-percentile individual “upper middle class” if you like, though actually most classifications wouldn’t call them that either in the UK or in the US; but an 80th-percentile area is still not an “upper middle class” area. That’s not how the words work.)
First, I apologize. I really didn’t intend for the tone to be attacking, and I am sorry that was how it sounded. I certainly wasn’t intentionally “suggesting [you were] somehow trying to hide or deny” any of the issues. I thought it was worth noting that the initial characterization was plausibly misleading, given that the sole indicator of being a “nice middle class area” seemed to be percentage of people with PhDs. Your defense was that it was no more than 3x the number of PhDs, but that doesn’t mean top 1⁄3, a point which you later agreed to. And after further discussion, I made and you checked an object level prediction I made, so I ceded the point.
Despite ceding the main earlier point, I continued the discussion, since I think the terms and definitions have gotten very confused by citing various incompatible sources and citing isolated sections of articles. And the same way that I have picked specific things to focus on responding to, you have picked many things I have said which you ignore. That’s fine—but my responses were not an isolated demand for rigor; I have made concrete claims and acknowledged those which were refuted, and you have raised points which I have responded to.
So again, I am not disputing your neighborhood, which I conceded I initially thought was more affluent than it is. Despite that, there is plenty you have now said characterizing classes, in responses, which I think should be clarified if you want to continue. Again, this doesn’t reflect on your earlier claim about you child’s school, but your defense of the position has been confusing to me, at least. For example, you compare $166,000/year in the US, which is the top 15% there, to incomes in your neighborhood—then note that £80k (i.e. $110k) in the UK is the top 5%. You don’t say anything about the equivalent income in the UK. I again agree that your neighborhood is not in the top 15%, but the top 15% there in the UK is £46k. (not $166k, i.e. £118k) The actual average income in your area, £36k, is in the top 25%. (I would suspect the incomes for those with children in the area is higher, but again, not near the top of upper middle class) Finally, the specific examples of upper middle class that you cite—Cameron, etc. are discussing their family backgrounds, not their current status.
I don’t actively “want to continue”, in that it seems to me that the whole content of this discussion is you saying or implying that I’ve badly misrepresented how affluent my area is, and me pointing out in various ways that that isn’t so.
However, your last paragraph seems once again like an accusation of inconsistency, so let me clarify.
“Upper middle class” means different things in different places. In the US, “class” is largely (but not wholly) about wealth. In the UK, “class” is largely (but not wholly) about social background. These are less different than that makes them sound because the relevant differences in social background are mostly driven by the wealth of one’s forebears, and in both societies there is a strong correlation between that and one’s own wealth.
The US has a more wealth-based notion of class and is also richer. So being “upper middle class” in the US means a level of wealth that would make you quite rich in the UK.
The UK has a more social-background-based notion of class, which in particular is strongly influenced by the existence of a (statistically very small) aristocratic class. So “upper class” in the UK means a smaller, more-elite fraction of the population than in the US, and “upper middle class” is pulled in the same direction. So being “upper middle class” in the UK typically (but not always, because of the wealth/background distinction) means being at a distinctly higher percentile of wealth than it does in the US.
The combined effect of these things is to put the typical “upper middle class” person or family at something like the same level of wealth in the two countries, although there’s plenty of fuzziness and variability.
(Perhaps I have by now made it clear that I do have some idea how social class works in the UK, enough so that you might believe me if I tell you that (1) I am definitely lower-upper-middle-class and (2) my household income is somewhere around the 95th percentile.)
So, issue 1 is that you’re wanting to call my neighbourhood “upper middle class” even though the people here don’t fit either the UK or the US notion of “upper middle class”, because you think it matches the definition you’d get if you applied the US-based notion directly to the UK despite the substantial differences between the two societies.
This would be (annoying but) excusable given that your main point was to suggest that my daughter’s school may be more atypical than I was claiming. But there’s more.
That percentile-ranking tool is not ranking individuals, it is ranking areas of the country. Areas vary less than individuals do, and (e.g.) an 80th-percentile area is not composed mostly of 80th-percentile individuals. On the other hand, terms like “upper middle class” are descriptions of individuals and families, and only secondarily of areas. If calling an area “upper middle class” (or “upper class”, or whatever) means anything, it should mean an area whose people are mostly of the class in question.
Almost no areas are “upper class” or even “upper middle class”.
(Perhaps an analogy may help. Suppose you have an area where the Jewish population is at the 95th percentile of areas in the country. Would you call it “very Jewish”? You probably shouldn’t, because I bet that 95th-percentile population is still <5%. I submit that “upper middle class” is like “Jewish” in this respect.)
In a typical 80th-percentile area, most people are middle-middle-class. That’s unusual; in a more typical area a large fraction will be lower on the socioeconomic scale. How might you describe such an area? Well, maybe as a “nice middle-class area”, for instance. Which happens to be exactly the term I used.
“But £36k is distinctly higher than a typical middle-middle-class salary in the UK.” It’s not all that much higher; median UK household income is £30k. Second, the £36k figure is a mean, not a median. Mean incomes are always higher than median incomes. UK mean household income turns out to be about £37k, if I’ve done my calculations correctly. Both the area mean of ~£36k and the national mean of ~£37k are described as “equivalised” and I don’t know whether that means the same thing in both cases, but the point is that this area is in fact about as well-off as the UK as a whole. No contradiction with the 80th-percentile thing; most areas are (when you calculate in terms of means) a bit poorer than average and a few are substantially richer.
So, issue 2 is that you’re taking terms that describe individuals and applying them to areas in a profoundly misleading way. You can call an 80th-percentile individual “upper middle class” if you like, though actually most classifications wouldn’t call them that either in the UK or in the US; but an 80th-percentile area is still not an “upper middle class” area. That’s not how the words work.)
Sorry, this is clearly much more confrontational than I intended.
To whatever extent that’s my fault, I’m sorry too. :-)