A convention, particularly in economics and sociology, for empirical identification of the “middle class” has been to mark off a segment of the population above a lower bound with respect to income, occupational status, and/or educational attainment. Instead, we argue here that wealth constitutes a superior standard for demarcation of the middle class. Wealth is an especially useful standard for identification of the middle class from subaltern communities, communities that have a generally marginalized status. We illustrate the value of the wealth criteria by examining the specific case of America's Black middle class. This alternative approach enables us to demonstrate that the Black middle class is proportionately much smaller than the White middle class and to demonstrate the limitations of several proposals recently advanced to close the racial wealth gap.

中文翻译：

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下层中产阶级：美国“黑人资产阶级”失踪案

一个惯例，特别是在经济学和社会学中，对于“中产阶级”的实证识别，是在收入、职业地位和/或教育程度方面划定高于下限的一部分人口。相反，我们在此认为财富构成了划分中产阶级的优越标准。财富是一个特别有用的标准，用于识别来自底层社区的中产阶级，这些社区具有普遍的边缘化地位。我们通过研究美国黑人中产阶级的具体案例来说明财富标准的价值。这种替代方法使我们能够证明，黑人中产阶级的比例 比白人中产阶级小得多，并证明了最近提出的缩小种族财富鸿沟的几项提议的局限性。