Thanks - I hear you about the psychology of underreporting, but I feel like there has to be (or should be) more nuance.

And the one or two studies I’ve seen have had issues with lack of segmentation or reporting scales, or articles written that misconstrue the insights to get a good headline.

Like I mentioned, I don’t think of class as a 3-point scale solely on income (upper, middle, lower). If that were the case, I don’t think you would need surveys. IMO, it’s a mix of wealth (not just income), lifestyle & disposable spend that needs to be looked at in a segmented (geo, age, etc.) to have value. For example, maybe when we’re in our 50s, I would think of us as a higher class, but not with our high, high fixed expenses and coming out of school a few years ago. It should also be more granular than a 3 point scale, but that’s neither here nor there.

Do we have a 1% or 2% income for the US? Sure. But as /u/TriFolk mentions, it’s more complicated.

Anecdotally, I just purchased some jeans the other day and signed up for a rewards program to save $ on shipping and found a discount code, so it’s hard for me to classify us in the same group as the older folks driving Lucids around Manhattan Beach, it that makes sense.