That would partly explain why many people responded according to a criterion other than that preferred by the pollsters. But the poll's report states that there is agreement on the nature of class, on what being 'middle class' actually entails - but that's a consensus they've generated by their leading question. It doesn't actually tell us why people identified as middle class. And I would guess that, per Vanneman and Cannon, a large part of the motivation for many of the respondents is the fact that they wield class power in the workplace - regardless of whether their income is relatively low.
>> In 1949, Richard Center asked a sample of Americans to place
>> themselves in one of four classes - middle, lower, working, or upper.
>> (In that order. Things listed first have an advantage.) Just over
>> half - 51% - said working class. In 1996, the General Social Survey
>> (GSS), a near-yearly inventory of what the masses own, think, and
>> feel, asking substantially the same question as Center (but in order
>> going from lower to upper), 45% said working class - after decades of
>> farewells to the working class. An equal share said middle class; 6%,
>> lower; and 4%, upper. Two ABC polls that year asking people to place
>> themselves in either of two classes found 55% working class, 44%,
>> middle. A New York Times poll that year found 8% lower class; 47%,
>> working; 40%, middle, and 3% upper.
Thanks for that. Those polls reflect precisely the 'status' conception of class that underlies this ABC/WaPo poll, that being a continuous ladder of prestige from lower to upper.
-- Richard Seymour Writer and blogger Email: leninstombblog at googlemail.com Website: http://www.leninology.blogspot.com Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/leninology Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Seymour_(writer) Book: http://www.versobooks.com/books/nopqrs/s-titles/seymour_r_the_liberal_defense_of_murder.shtml