Abstract
The wealth of billionaires (the top 0.1%) is less of the authors’ concern than the living standards of the “Joneses”. People are likely to be more interested how the gap between them and people they know is increasing. It seems that entry/exit into and from the top 0.1% is relatively open. Many of the wealthiest people from the United States to China, Russia, or Central Europe come from humble background. But, can we detect a trend for the upper middle class (top 20%) to become increasingly closed? The answer is: yes. This chapter identifies three mechanisms of the increasing closure: elite education, inheritance of wealth (chiefly real estate) and assortative mating.
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- 1.
For a recent good quality intellectual survey of the discussion on the importance of the middle class under the supervision of the International Labour Organization (ILO), see Vaughan-Whitehead (2016).
- 2.
Riviera (2015, p. 12).
- 3.
Khan (2011).
- 4.
Riviera , op. cit., p. 276.
- 5.
Riviera, op. cit., pp. 14–16.
- 6.
Op. cit., p. 187.
- 7.
Rivera (2015, pp. 12–13).
- 8.
Reeves (2017, p. 63).
- 9.
Cited by Reeves (2017, p. 62).
- 10.
“The Age That Women Have Babies: How a Gap Divides America”, The New York Times, 9 August 2018.
- 11.
Putnam (2015, p. 40).
- 12.
Pearson (2016).
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Mihályi, P., Szelényi, I. (2019). Class Reproduction of the Upper Middle Class (Top 20%). In: Rent-Seekers, Profits, Wages and Inequality. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03846-5_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03846-5_4
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