This paper aims to understand why and by how much perceptions of social ranking differ from objective rankings based on self-reported income. It focuses on the middle class because persons of all income levels show a strong bias towards identifying themselves as middle class. Using a rich...

There is an increasing literature that discusses how to measure the middle class. Some approaches are based on an arbitrary deÖnition such as income quartiles or the poverty line. Recently, Foster and Wolfson developed a methodology which lacks of arbitrariness that enables us to compare the...

This document presents a systematic review of empirical approaches to the identification and measurement of the middle class as the concept is used in the applied literature. It then presents an arguably less arbitrary definition of the middle class which is based on sound principles of...

Some approaches to measuring the middle class are based on an arbitrary definition such as income quartiles or the poverty line. Foster and Wolfson have recently developed a methodology without arbitrariness. We apply this tool and a complementary method–the relative distribution approach–to...

This article studies temporal variations in wealth levels and distribution in an Ottoman context during the eighteenth century. By analysing the probate estate inventories of the Muslim deceased in Kastamonu, located in north-central Anatolia, we demonstrate that real wealth levels generally...

Court records are used extensively in historical research. Preserved as summaries of daily legal proceedings, they give historians a unique opportunity of access to the information about the names, personal characteristics, and socio-economic status of individuals and about the laws, local...

In the midst of a serious macroeconomic crisis Argentina implemented a large social program – the Programa Jefes de Hogar (PJH) – that provides cash transfers to unemployed household heads meeting certain criteria. In practice, giving the difficulties in monitoring informal jobs, the...

This document presents and discusses an extensive set of statistics aimed at characterizing the degree of economic polarisation in the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries. The study is based on a dataset of household surveys from 21 LAC countries in the period 1989-2004. Latin America...

Este trabajo presenta y discute un conjunto de estadísticas que caracterizan el nivel y la evolución de la polarización laboral en Argentina entre los años 1992 y 2006. Los resultados obtenidos sugieren que el nivel de polarización ha atravesado una primera etapa de crecimiento para luego...