The difficulty in measuring the transformations undergone by the middle classes is due to the impossibility of defining them satisfactorily, the latter often being so. “hollow”. They bring together very diverse social groups (employees, craftsmen, traders, small business owners, category B civil servants, school teachers, technicians, etc.) who have in common the fact that they have capital “diplomas, income, assets or housing” to which ” hang on “according to sociologist and economist Dominique Goux and Eric Maurin.
Economists willingly reason in terms of income: the OECD thus retains people whose income is between two thirds and twice the median income (1,837 euros in France, or between 1,300 and 3,500 euros). INSEE is more interested in “intermediate jobs”those that are typically “between executives and executing agents”. Sociologists use, for their part, the diploma (bac + 2 or bac + 3), which is linked to the profession and the social category. “Ideally, we should also take into account the territory where we live, and the heritage inheritedadds the sociologist Camille Peugny. A couple who earn twice 2,000 euros will be part of the middle class, unless they have inherited housing. »
Depending on the definition used, the size of the population varies greatly, and the more it pulls down, the more the downgrading phenomenon will be visible. Economist Thomas Piketty works on “40% of the middle” Population, “between the richest 10% and the poorest 50%”, in his work A brief history of equality (Threshold, 2021). With an income criterion close to that of the OECD, France Strategy, an organization which depends on Matignon, arrived, in a note from 2016, at a proportion of two thirds of the French population. Sociologist Henri Mendras spoke of a “central constellation” representing about a quarter of the working population.