Lower middle class
Social class which is a sub-division of the greater middle class
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United Kingdom
The British lower middle class, when described historically, primarily consisted of office workers: when describing class segregation of housing in the Nottingham of 1901, clerks, bookkeepers, estate agents and teachers are described as having been lower middle class. Researchers today sometimes equate NRS social grade C1, "Supervisory, clerical and junior managerial, administrative and professional", with "lower middle class".
In the nineteenth century, the middle and lower middle classes were able to live in suburbs due to the development of horse-drawn omnibuses and railways. One radical Liberal politician (Charles Masterman), writing in 1909 used "the Middle Classes" and "the suburbans" synonymously. In the early twenty-first century, there were no Mosaic 2010 geodemographic groups where the proportion of residents in NRS social grade C1 was rated as "high" or "low" in the 2010 Index; it was rated as "average" in all Mosaic groups, whether these were of a suburban, rural, city or small-town nature.
Some researchers conceive of the lower middle class as consisting of those who work in lower-grade service-sector managerial jobs or semi-professions (the lower-grade service class in Oesch 2006) and small business owners. Prior to the expansion in higher education from the 1960s onwards, members of this class generally did not have a university education.
Members of the lower middle class typically speak in local accents, although relatively mild. Votes in this area are split and minority parties will have a stronger proportion.
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United States
In American society, the middle class may be divided into two or three sub-groups. When divided into two parts, the lower middle class, also sometimes simply referred to as "middle class", consists of roughly one third of households, roughly twice as large as the upper middle or managerial class. Common occupation fields are semi-professionals, such as lower-level managers, small business owners and skilled craftsmen. These individuals commonly have some college education or perhaps a Bachelor's degree and earn a comfortable living. Already among the largest social classes, rivaled only by the working class, the American lower middle class is diverse and growing.
Though not common in sociological models, the middle class may be divided into three sections in vernacular language usage. In this system the term lower middle class relates to the demographic referred to as working class in most sociological models. Yet some class models, such as those by sociologist Leonard Beeghley, suggest the middle class to be one cohesive socio-economic demographic, including the demographics otherwise referred to as lower, simply middle or upper middle class in one group comprising about 45% of households.