In a country that generally views itself as classless, why is it that we hear so much about the American “middle class”? The concept of upper and lower classes comes from nineteenth-century British society, and we Americans, with our fundamental belief in equality for all, resist such designations. Beyond the promise of life itself, our democracy also proclaims the rights of liberty and “the pursuit of happiness.” We believe that anyone can become president and that in the United States people can succeed by “pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.” Does the American myth of the self-made man (which now includes woman), as promulgated by Benjamin Franklin and Horatio Alger, still resonate today?

In 1951, sociologist C. Wright Mills wrote about distributions of property and income for the “new middle-class.” “Everything,” he stated, “from the chance to stay alive during the first year after birth to the chance to view fine art; the chance to remain healthy and if sick to get well again quickly; the chance to avoid becoming a juvenile delinquent; and very crucially, the chance to complete an intermediary or higher educational grade—these are among the chances that are crucially influenced by one’s position in the class structure of a modern society.”

We look back to post–World War II, and especially to the 1950s, as the birth of the middle class, a period when the American Dream became a reality for more Americans than ever before. It was a time of great expansion through the construction of highways, the growth of the suburbs as exemplified by such developments as Levittown, New York, and the wide availability of consumer goods. Even families of relatively modest means could have two cars in the driveway, laundry in the washer, an apple pie in the oven, and Ed Sullivan or Lucille Ball on the TV in the living room—all on one income, no less. Of course, the reality wasn’t that rosy for everyone, but that idyllic picture still captures our national imagination.

Recent decades have seen a dramatic shrinking of the middle class as the nation’s wealth has become more concentrated in the hands of the very rich. Is the American Dream still alive and well? Is America still the land of upward mobility? Does the term middle class still have meaning?

Sources

Horatio Alger, from Ragged Dick, or Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks (1867)

Harlon L. Dalton, Horatio Alger (1995)

Alan Brinkley, from The Fifties (2012)

Holly Sklar, The Growing Gulf between the Rich and the Rest of Us (2005)

Paul Krugman, from The Conscience of a Liberal (2007)

Thomas Sowell, Income Confusion (2007)

Hedrick Smith, from Who Stole the American Dream? (2012)

Isabel V. Sawhill, Scott Winship, and Kerry Searle Grannis, from Pathways to the Middle Class: Balancing Personal and Public Responsibilities (2012)

Sally Edelstein, Mutually Assured Consumption (collage, 2012)