This paper updates and extends my earlier work (published in the June 2007 issue of the Journal of Economic Issues on how the middle class fares throughout the world. Wave #6 data from the Luxembourg Income Study, recently released and centered around 2004, provides an opportunity to assess what...

After the fierce class struggles in the first postwar years, a societal model describing Japan as a general middle-class society with outstanding equality in opportunities and outcome became dominant. In recent years, a new societal model of Japan as a divided society has replaced this general...

"America is becoming a class-based society. It is now conventional wisdom to focus on the wealth of the top 1 percent-especially the top 0.01 percent-and how the ultra-rich are concentrating income and prosperity while incomes for most other Americans are stagnant. But the most important,...