What does it mean to be "middle class," and what does it take to get there?



A new study from Brookings tries valiantly to answer both questions. The authors, Isabell Sawhill and Scott Winship, start with a road map of the middle-class lifestyle. They name six benchmarks, one for each life stage from family formation and birth to adulthood. Children are considered on track for a middle class life if (for example) they are graduating from high school by 19 with a GPA above 2.5 or earning a college degree by 29. Here are all six benchmarks.



Rich children are twice as likely to make it to the middle class -- i.e. earning 300% of the poverty level by 40. "The chance that a child born into a family in the top income quintile will end up in one of the top three quintiles by the time they are in their forties is 82 percent," they write, "while the chance for a child born into a family in the bottom quintile is only 30 percent." (The report also includes a really sober and enlightening explanation for why women, who are more likely to graduate high school and college, still fall behind men in late-career earnings.)



How do the bottom 20% and top 20% fare? The graph below shows how sharply the road to the middle class diverges from a young age. But in particular the dip in the third column, at age 19, suggests that low-income children are at high risk to drop out of high school or be convicted of a crime.

