Using $2$20 (purchasing power parity) per capita daily income as the definition of middle class, majority of households in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) have become middle class by 2007, which is especially impressive given that around 40% of households were still considered poor in 1991....

The impact of market transition on the changing order of social stratification in post-socialist regimes has been a highly prominent topic in sociology in recent decades. However, the debate has yielded no concrete conclusions, due in part to the lack of substantive institutional analysis. In...