The Middle Classes in Canada and Quebec

The debate about the middle classes and their importance is increasingly recurrent in the social sciences and in the public arena. But while the concept is often mobilized, there is little consensus on its definition, its evolution or the measurement of its size and economic weight.

The Observatoire québécois des inégalités has published the first in a series of three research notes that take stock of what is known about the middle classes, particularly in Quebec and Canada. This work is based on a literature review and on the analysis of some secondary data drawn, among others, from Statistics Canada’s 2019 Financial Situation Survey.

Key facts

• The middle class is most often used as an indicator of the economic and social evolution of societies.
• Scientists struggle to define the middle class. However, a certain consensus seems to be emerging in the literature that we should speak of middle classes in the plural.
• The middle classes do not spontaneously designate delimited social groups, but rather embody an in-between: between the rich and the poor.
• What characterizes the middle classes is, above all, the fear of downgrading and aspirations for upward mobility.
• There are several ways of defining the middle class in the literature: economic approaches, sociological approaches and self-identification.
• Most often, middle classes are defined as segments of the population located in the middle of the economic distribution, between the less well-off and the rich. Their size is calculated on the basis of thresholds calculated from the distance separating their income from the adjusted median household income. This distance can also be assessed on the basis of wealth, purchasing power or the poverty line.
• According to the data analyzed, the middle classes appear stronger and more resilient in Quebec than in Canada as a whole, partly because of the social and fiscal policies applied there.
• Much of the scientific literature defines the middle class in terms of its members’ level of education and occupation, with education and occupation being the best indicators for estimating levels of material acquisition, social status and life opportunities.
• Recent studies have established the importance of defining the middle classes in terms of individuals’ class identity.
• We call self-identification or subjective identification the fact that people identify with a social class, through a sense of class belonging.
• The feeling of belonging to a class does not always correspond to one’s class situation. In Quebec, many people claim to belong to the middle classes, even when their incomes are in fact too high or too low to place them in this group.
• The results of several sample surveys tend to show an inequality in the inclination of individuals to consider themselves members of the middle class or not.
• An overview of the literature does not point to a general decline in the middle classes, even if, in Canada more than in Quebec, the downgrading of the middle classes is starting to become a major source of concern.