Comments on: “A Third of Americans Now Say They Are in the Lower Classes”: Pew Research http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2012/09/12/a-third-of-americans-now-say-they-are-in-the-lower-classes-pew-research/ A First Things Blog Wed, 22 May 2013 21:47:44 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Stuart Koehl http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2012/09/12/a-third-of-americans-now-say-they-are-in-the-lower-classes-pew-research/comment-page-1/#comment-73274 Stuart Koehl Wed, 12 Sep 2012 21:51:26 +0000 http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/?p=47636#comment-73274 Pew should know that, statistically, this is either impossible, or entirely normal. A normal bell curve would say that a third of all families would be in the lower classes, a third in the middle classes, and a third in the upper classes. So the situation is normal.

On the other hand, if we define lower classes to be the lowest income quintile, and the upper classes to be the highest income quintile, and the middle classes the three middle quintiles, then the situation is impossible.

Pew should realize that terms such as “lower”, “middle” and “upper” class are entirely relative; the distribution remains constant, and only the income levels change.

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