Big Ideas in Politics: Defining the Middle Class

Though December may seem like ancient history in this media coverage of this campaign, I'd like to draw your attention to a post by the campaign reporter Matt Bai on the New York Times Politics blog. It seems that nearly all the candidates these days are talking about helping the struggling middle class, but precise meaning of the term remains hazy. Bai writes:

All the Democratic candidates, to one extent or another, have been blurring the distinction between the poor and the “middle class” — arguing, in effect, that rising inequality means there is increasingly little distinction between the two. It’s important to define these terms, because they have a lot to do with how you make policy. We know what we mean by poverty, more or less; the federal government defines that by income ($20,650 for a family of four at the moment), and about 14 percent of Americans qualify. But you might be surprised to learn — I certainly was — that there is no recognized definition of what it means to be middle class.

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Read a profile of Matt Bai written by an NYU student.