Business | Economy
And you thought America had no class
For most people around the world, earning a million dollars makes you rich. In America, it just makes you middle class.
- Reuters
- Published: 01:04 March 1, 2008
- Hard work. They put in a 70-hour work week compared to 40 hours a week for other middle-class Americans.
- Networking. "They use information as if it were capital," Schiff said.
- Perseverance. They typically fail professionally twice as often as other middle-class Americans, but they do not give up.
- Risk. They choose jobs with greater risks and bigger pay whereas middle-class Americans tend to avoid risk and try to work in jobs they love.
New York: For most people around the world, earning a million dollars makes you rich. In America, it just makes you middle class.
A new book, The Middle-Class Millionaire: The Rise of The New Rich And How They Are Changing America ($24, Currency Doubleday), finds that 8.4 million US households have a net worth of between $1 million and $10 million of money they did not inherit.
While these middle-class millionaires live in regular neighbourhoods and send their kids to public schools, they behave very differently from their less-wealthy neighbours.
Middle-class millionaires exhibit four qualities that "have a lot to do with why they are so successful and influential," Lewis Schiff, who wrote the book with Russ Alan Prince, said.
Schiff and Prince, who owns a market research firm, interviewed 3,714 middle-class households, including 586 middle-class millionaires.
Their findings also show how their behaviours influence larger society. "If the middle-class millionaire likes something, it is a high likelihood that the rest of the middle class will be interested in it," Schiff said.
But while most Americans might want millions, many wonder if working 70 hours a week is too high a price to pay.
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