To this end, the middle class valued cleanliness, discipline, morality, hard work, education, and good manners. Hard work and education enabled them to rise in life. Middle-class children, therefore, did not work in factories.

The term middle-class values is used by various writers and politicians to include such qualities as hard work, self-discipline, thrift, honesty, aspiration and ambition.

The key ingredients of a middle-class lifestyle, according to the report, are to: own a home, be able to save for retirement, provide a college education for their children, have health security (insurance), a car for each adult, and a family vacation at least once a year.

Answer: Middle Classes – The Thinkers. They wanted change in France, and they were the people with ideas for what France should look like. More separation between Church and State, fairer taxation, a constitutional monarchy.

Evidence from the World Values Survey. Generally, higher class status is correlated with more progressive values that likely to contribute to higher economic growth. The middle class, on the other, has a greater role in demanding greater political accountability.

The eighteenth century France witnessed the emergence of the middle class. They earned their wealth through an overseas trade and by manufacturing goods such as woollen and silk textiles that were further exported or bought by the rich class. They were mainly traders and manufacturers.

The following are common characteristics of the middle class.

• Development. A large middle class is a defining feature of a developed country.
• Productivity. Productivity is the amount of value created in an hour of work.
• Labor Specialization.
• Generalists.
• Entrepreneurs.
• Wealth.
• Consumption.
• Leisure Class.

What traits define the middle class?

The Pew Research Center defines the middle class as households that earn between two-thirds and double the median U.S. household income, which was $61,372 in 2017, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. 21 Using Pew’s yardstick, middle income is made up of people who make between $42,000 and $126,000.

Lacking the protection of great wealth, members of the middle class agonized over the fear that they might slip into the ranks of wage laborers; thus they strove to maintain or improve their middle-class status and that of their children. To this end, the middle class valued cleanliness, discipline, morality, hard work, education, and good manners.

In the early nineteenth century, members of the middle class began to limit the number of children they had. Children no longer contributed economically to the household, and raising them “correctly” required money and attention. It therefore made sense to have fewer of them. Middle-class women did not work for wages.

The middling rank, which formed a rough precursor to the middle class, included artisans and small proprietors along with professionals and semiprofessionals, who took their places in a strictly ordered social hierarchy. While particular individuals might rise beyond their beginnings, the vast majority were expected to remain within their rank.

During the Gilded Age, an expanded middle class and a wealthy upper class found new things to do with their time and money: leisure, consumption, and philanthropy. During the Gilded Age, male and female office workers expanded the ranks of the middle class.