Today’s new elite don’t drive fast cars and wear flashy designer clothes. Plutocrats may still be hiring private jets and drinking Champagne at lunch, but this group is far more subtle.

This “aspirational class,” as I call them, define themselves by their cultural capital and their consumer choices, not their income bracket. They spend their lunch hour listening to NPR podcasts like “Invisibilia” and “This American Life,” eating kale, or catching a noon Pilates session. Some of them use their lunch hour to pump breastmilk for their babies.

In short, these elites “aspire” to be better human beings and reveal their social consciousness and environmental awareness through their consumer choices.

Are you a member of the aspirational class? Here’s a checklist:

1. You buy things that make you feel like a better human. You eschew made-in-China T-shirts for organic cotton, preferably made in Los Angeles or Brooklyn. You know the difference between direct-trade and fair-trade coffee beans, and you will stand in line for 20 minutes for your Chemex pour-over coffee from the local artisanal coffee brewer The Amazon acquisition of Whole Foods causes you cognitive dissonance (online delivery will improve in spades, but will the red chard still be locally sourced?).

Part of aspirational class consumerism is rooted in “conspicuous production” – transparency in production processes and a premium on socially conscious manufacturing justifies the expense and is inherent to the value of most of your consumer goods.

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2. Inconspicuous consumption accounts for a significant share of your spending. When BMWs can be leased for a few hundred dollars a month, material goods lose much of their status. In particular, today’s wealthy elites devote large amounts of income toward education, retirement and good health care and significantly less on conventional status goods. With these choices, particularly in education, the aspirational class shores up the mobility and futures of their children.

Postrecession, the top income groups are spending less on conspicuous consumption while the middle class has returned to prerecession spending on conspicuous consumption. Overall, those in the top 10% of income groups are devoting approximately 20% of total expenditures to inconspicuous consumption while the middle class is spending just over 9% in this category.

Not all inconspicuous consumption is expensive, though: Essie Ballet Slippers nail polish costs a mere $7.99 at the drugstore and is the trademark color for elites (and has been for decades).

3. Parenting and its accouterments are the new status symbol. Breast-feeding, baby carriers, mommy and me classes and organic quinoa baby crackers are the currency by which today’s aspirational class reveal their knowledge of “best” parenting practices.

For some, baby formula induces shame despite a lack of significant medical evidence indicating that breast-feeding is necessarily better. As one mother explained, “A friend told me that she had to finally tell her husband to stop referring to it as formula in public – she wanted him to only call it milk so no one would know. And I know we are not alone.”

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4. You talk about ideas, not stuff. Podcasts, book reviews, op-eds in The Wall Street Journal and Malcom Gladwell are the sparkling trinkets that reveal your status, not acquisition of new technological gadgets or cars. When you do buy (or lease) a new car, it’s likely got some superior environmental edge you can intellectually discuss in tandem– the new Tesla (because it’s electric), the Mercedes SUV (because it’s diesel) or the ultimate in “stealth wealth,” the new Volvo station wagon.

5. You have the luxury and flexibility of time. You make time to go to farmers markets and cardio barre classes late morning. You breast-fed your baby for a year. This may not work for aspirational-class lawyers and medical doctors. But for many elites in the creative and technology industries who have more control over their schedules, exercise and healthy eating are part and parcel of their daily life. To borrow from Woody Allen, 80% of aspirational class membership is showing up. Simply being at the farmers market at 11 a.m. selecting organic heirloom tomatoes defines membership.

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Elizabeth Currid-Halkett is the James Irvine Chair in Urban and Regional Planning and a professor of public policy at the University of Southern California. She is the author of “The Sum of Small Things; A theory of the aspirational class.”