CHAPTER 1.
THE TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY “LEISURE” CLASS
1. The “lady tasting tea test” is a now famous study of one of the first statistical experiments, and the foundation of what statisticians call the “null hypothesis,” or the assertion that two or more observed phenomena are not related—in this case, the lady’s ability to determine the composition of the tea and the reality of milk in first or last. In Fischer’s experiment, the null hypothesis (that the lady could not determine the composition of the tea) was rejected (because in fact she did). I first came across this story and Fischer’s formulation of the null hypothesis in David Salsburg’s 2002 book, The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the 20th Century.
2. Fortnum and Mason 2014.
3. I must thank the writer and historian Kate Berridge for this information.
4. Douglas and Isherwood 1996.
5. Ibid.
6. While Veblen was always careful to point out that status emulation occurred in all strata of society, he was most critical of the leisure class.
7. Menken 1920, p. 72.
8. Hutchinson 1957.
9. As the great twentieth-century public intellectual John Kenneth Galbraith observed of Veblen, he practiced what he wrote: Veblen’s house was a sty, his bed unmade, and he was agnostic at a time when most of his colleagues espoused Christianity and divinity degrees. Veblen never really fit in. In a 1957 essay in The Listener, the famous economist T. W. Hutchinson called him “an economist outsider” but also “something of a major American prophet” who studied and understood the social and economic matters of the human condition.
10. Galbraith remarked it is one of the only books written by an economist in the nineteenth century that is still read today.
11. Veblen’s concerns about status also revolved around a number of other key concepts, ranging from the subjection of women, to the argument that all of society remains tribal (and by extension barbarian), to his work on the practices and objects that demarcate status. This latter focus is perhaps the most damning of current society, particularly his study of conspicuous leisure (education, intellectualism, sporting activities) and nonpecuniary practices (etiquette and manners), conspicuous waste (such as unnecessary house help or burning blankets like the Kwakiutl), and, of course, conspicuous consumption.
12. Vaizey 1975; Seckler 1975.
13. Capitalism dates back to the fourteenth century with tensions between English aristocracy and agricultural producers, but modern-day capitalism, also known as merchant capitalism, can be traced to sixteenth- to eighteenth-century England.
14. For example, he believed all of social hierarchy had much to do with Darwinism and predatory behavior rather than simply class.
15. Wallace-Hadrill 1990, pp. 145–192.
16. Again I must thank Kate Berridge for this example.
17. Wallace-Hadrill 1994; Berridge 2007.
18. Berridge 2007.
19. Interview with Kate Berridge.
20. Wallace-Hadrill 1994, p. 166.
21. Wallace-Hadrill 1990.
22. Price 2014.
23. Richards 1991, p. 8.
24. Charles et al. 2009.
25. Richards 1991.
26. A/X data: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armani#Armani_Exchange. J.Crew data: http://www.vault.com/company-profiles/retail/j-crew-group,-inc/company-overview.aspx. Ralph Lauren data: http://www.vault.com/company-profiles/general-consumer-products/ralph-lauren-corporation/company-overview.aspx. The Gap data: http://www.gapinc.com/content/gapinc/html/aboutus/keyfacts.html.
27. http://www.economist.com/node/17963363.
28. Ibid., and http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2822546/As-Romeo-Beckham-stars-new-ad-Burberry-went-chic-chav-chic-again.html.
29. Ewing 2014.
30. Frank 2012.
31. The study uses education as a proxy for wealth as the two variables tend to correlate.
32. Gershuny 2000; Lesnard 2003.
33. http://www.statista.com/statistics/184272/educational-attainment-of-college-diploma-or-higher-by-gender/.
34. Please see Piore and Sabel 1984.
35. http://www.economist.com/node/4462685.
36. Wilson 1987.
37. Reich 1992.
38. Florida’s understanding of economic restructuring includes all sectors and occupations that are responsible for generating “meaningful new forms,” which includes a whole host of other workers including artists, musicians, writers, scientists, engineers, and other members of the “creative class.” See Florida 2002.
39. Brooks 2000, pp. 85–94.
40. Trentmann 2016.
CHAPTER 2.
CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
1. Galbraith 1958.
2. In Vance Packard’s The Status Seekers, he argues that material goods do not actually reveal status. Many of the trappings of social behavior rely on hidden behaviors and norms such as choice of word or accent.
3. Johnson 1988.
4. As the historian Donna Loftus told me, Victorian England middle classes had a somewhat fraught relationship with conspicuous consumption. On one hand, they were extremely frugal and proclaimed the importance of thrift and austerity and eating porridge, yet others buy fancy houses with highly decorated interiors.
5. The numbers in this chapter are mainly from the Consumer Expenditure Interview Survey Public-Use Microdata. They may be slightly different from those from Consumer Expenditure Diary or Integrated Survey, but the overall trend is consistent.
6. 1996 is the earliest data that allow us to undertake this analysis in detail.
7. The consumption ratio is defined here as the ratio of (a) the amount of dollars spent on conspicuous consumption of a certain subpopulation over the US average conspicuous consumption expenditures, to (b) the earnings/income of a certain subpopulation over the US average income. [consumption ratio = (the amount of money spent on conspicuous consumption of group i / the US average amount of money spent on conspicuous consumption) / (the income of group i / the US average income)].
8. Low-income families spend 38% more than their income ratio would suggest, but 4 points less than they did in 1996.
9. “The higher the education, the higher the cremation rate. The higher the income, the higher the cremation rate. Asian populations cremate at a higher rate. Urban communities cremate at a higher rate. African-American populations have a lower cremation rate.” http://connectingdirectors.com/articles/3220-cremation-by-the-numbers-cana-projections-are-in#sthash.Ol9aUPLC.dpuf.
10. Charles et al. 2009.
11. Heffetz 2011.
12. For a complete breakdown of all variables studied and regression results, please see the appendix to this book.
13. In more recent analysis my colleagues and I included total expenditure as one of the control variables. Taking into account total expenditures we find that more education corresponds with a lesser total share of expenditure on conspicuous consumption. See Currid-Halkett et al. 2018. To examine how consumption behavior differs across different population groups, this research estimates the following equation:
yijt = Xijtβ + αj + τt + εijt
where yijt is the log of consumption of household i in metropolitan area j in year t. We compare regression coefficients with different types of consumption, such as conspicuous consumption, inconspicuous consumption, and other expenditures. Xijt is a vector of demographic and socio-economic characteristics of an individual household, αj is a metropolitan area characteristic, and τt is a year fixed effect. The sampling weights are used in the regression to account for sampling design, and robust standard errors are used to correct for heteroscedasticity. For more detailed information, see the appendix, as well as the table “Consumption by Income Class,” which is available online.
CHAPTER 3.
BALLET SLIPPERS AND YALE TUITION: INCONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION AND THE NEW ELITES
1. Bourdieu 1984.
2. Zukin and Macguire 2004.
3. Packard 1959, chapter 10, p. 85.
4. The term inconspicuous consumption has been used by others to describe other consumption phenomena. See for example Postrel 2008. In his 1957 essay on fashion, the German sociologist Georg Simmel observed that once the middle classes began to imitate the elites’ form of dressing, the elites reconfigured their style to again distinguish themselves, which he believed explained why fashion changed so much and so quickly. If not for class, Simmel argued, fashion would not exist. Fashion’s raison d’être is to essentially reaffirm existing class lines through visual cues. And the same can be applied to mannerisms and styles of life. Along Simmel’s lines, the increasing ostentation and public display of wealth present in middle-class life has made the upper middle classes revert from the baroque affectation of Veblen’s time to more subtle signifiers of social status. The WASPs have always prized discretion and in-the-know forms of status symbols (bulky Barbour coats, vacationing in the Hamptons when they were rustic and rural), but this more subtle form of class identification has spread across the new elites.
5. Gershuny 2000.
6. Fussell 1983.
7. Khan and Jerolmack 2013.
8. Holt 1998.
9. Khan 2012.
10. Packard 1959, chapter 10, pp. 89–90.
11. Johnston and Baumann 2007.
12. Khan 2012.
13. Ibid., p. 16.
14. Moore 2012.
15. Bennhold 2012.
16. U = upper class and non-U = non-upper class.
17. Cooke 2012.
18. Fussell 1983.
19. Weber 1978.
20. Bourdieu called the milieu in which we gained this information and capital the “habitus,” or the environment and larger system in which tastes were formed and were different from other habitus.
21. Lamont 1992.
22. Gill 2014.
23. Khan and Jerolmack 2013.
24. Gershuny 2000.
25. Please see the appendix for a detailed breakdown of the consumption categories and items collected from BLS Consumer Expenditure data.
26. Frank 2015.
27. Sayer, Bianchi, and Robinson 2004.
28. Bianchi 2000.
29. Bianchi, Milkie, Sayer, and Robinson 2000.
30. Sullivan 2014.
31. Kurtzleben 2013.
32. Work by Miles Corak shows that those societies where education provides the greatest benefits are also far less mobile. Corak 2013.
33. Gunderman 2014.
34. Lee and Painter 2016.
35. Mills 1956.
36. Khan 2015.
37. Dale, Krueger, and National Bureau of Economic Research 2011.
38. The only exception to the Dale and Krueger paper is for racial and ethnic minorities (black and Hispanic) and for students with parents who have little education. Dale and Krueger believe this result may be due to highly selective colleges providing good access networks for these more disadvantaged students, and as such they leave university with greater social and cultural capital than they entered it, which is not the case for the wealthy, elite students.
CHAPTER 4.
MOTHERHOOD AS CONSPICUOUS LEISURE IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
1. Health and Human Services has aimed for the goal that 50% of women breastfeed exclusively through 6 months and 75% partially breast-feed through 12 months (most babies start to eat solid food at 4–6 months).
2. Sacker et al. 2013.
3. CDC Breastfeeding Report Card 2013.
4. Arora et al. 2000.
5. CDC Breastfeeding Report Card 2014.
6. Racial discrepancies exist as well, with 80% of non-Hispanic whites breastfeeding versus 65% of blacks. Among those who do breast-feed, Asians and non-Hispanic whites are the most likely to follow the guidelines precisely: Almost 16% of Asians and 13% of non-Hispanic whites exclusively breast-feed through 6 months, while 76% of all non-Hispanic white women at least initiate breast-feeding. Age matters too. Seventy-seven percent of mothers giving birth over the age of 30 breast-feed, while younger mothers are less likely to do so.
7. McDowell, Wang, and Kennedy-Stephenson 2008.
8. Heck, Braveman, Cubbin, Chávez, and Kiely 2006.
9. Robinson 2011.
10. Barthes 2012.
11. Ibid., pp. 79–82.
12. Barthes 2012.
13. Ibid., p. 82.
14. Barthes 2012, pp. 84–84.
15. Barthes 2012, p. 129.
16. Barthes 2012.
17. McCann, Baydar, and Williams 2007.
18. Langellier, Chaparro, Wang, Koleilat, and Waley 2014.
19. Guendelman et al. 2009.
20. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/05/07/opting-out-about-10-of-highly-educated-moms-are-staying-at-home/.
21. Cohen 2014.
22. Sandberg 2013.
23. Kendall 2013.
24. For further fascinating research on the topic of low-income mothers and their barriers to breast-feeding, please see Chin and Dozier 2012.
25. For a review of some of the key research in this area, please see: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/everybody-calm-down-about-breastfeeding/.
26. Groskop 2013.
27. Bakalar 2014.
28. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/04/the-case-against-breast-feeding/307311/. Rosen 2009.
29. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/apr/01/france-breast-breastfed-baby-death.
30. Sussman 1975, p. 313.
31. Ibid.
32. Sussman 1975.
33. Ibid., p. 313.
34. Golden 1996.
35. Ibid.
36. Wright and Schanler 2001.
37. Druckerman 2012.
38. Wright and Schanler 2001.
39. Roth and Henley 2012.
40. Gould, Davey, and Stafford 1989.
41. Shapiro 2012, p. MM18.
42. Many people might think home birth is a curious choice given the pain and lack of a medical doctor, but a surprising number of women would prefer this option. Marian MacDorman, a statistician with the CDC and an expert on home births, suggested, “Maybe these [minority, poor] women are less interested in home births. But as a midwife pointed out to me, ‘Maybe they just don’t have the access.’” MacDorman continued, “Recent survey data supports the second hypothesis. Black women were interested at the same rate as whites … [While] the cost of a home birth is about a third of a hospital birth but most insurance doesn’t cover it.”
43. Garcia-Navarro 2013.
44. http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/01/cesarean_nation_why_do_nearly_half_of_chinese_women_deliver_babies_via_c_section_.html.
45. Diamond 2012.
46. Weber 1905.
47. Veblen even went on to point out that much of the staff in a wealthy household was somewhat unnecessary, suggesting that they too were sitting around and being unproductive, an observation he coined “conspicuous waste.”
48. Guryan, Hurst, and Kearney 2008.
49. Ramey and Ramey 2010.
50. http://static1.squarespace.com/static/54694fa6e4b0eaec4530f99d/t/55102730e4b0bc812283d0ed/1427121968182/Investing+in+Children-+Changes+in+Parental+Spending+on+Children%2C+1972%E2%80%932007.pdf.
51. Linder 1970.
52. Brooks 2013; Klinkenborg 2013. For a more expanded look at the issue, see American Academy for Arts and Sciences 2013.
53. http://observer.com/2005/04/lotte-berk-in-last-stretch/#ixzz3fnrZvF13.
54. http://observer.com/2005/03/battle-of-the-butts/#ixzz3ftn8Qx9B. My interview with Jennifer Williams was also very helpful on the history of the Lotte Berk studio and the origin of cardio barre classes.
55. http://observer.com/2005/03/battle-of-the-butts/.
56. Greif 2016.
57. http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21660170-sweating-purpose-becoming-elite-phenomenon-spin-separate.
58. Druckerman 2012.
59. Greenfeld 2014.
60. Bell 1976.
61. Trentmann 2016, p. 18.
62. Daniel 2016.
CHAPTER 5.
CONSPICUOUS PRODUCTION
1. Fair Trade is a large organization involving many different actors (farmers, importers, exporters, and roasters) that aims to offer a living wage and sustainable production on a wide scale. By meeting minimum standards put forth by Fair Trade, farmers gain access to a larger market for their goods and are given funds to further help their business. These efforts are laudable, but there are significant drawbacks: Coffee can be sold for much higher prices to consumers, but those profits are not returned to the original farmers; quantity matters more than quality (farmers are not compensated for better quality beans); and the local distribution centers (offering the relationships and discretionary funds) can be poorly run. There are a number of upsides to the alternative Direct Trade model: there’s no middleman (so that it is just a relationship between the farmer and the roaster); smaller crops that allow for diversification of beans; a negotiated discussion between the farmer and the roaster on the appropriate price for a particular batch of beans (farmers are paid an accurate price based on value of the beans); and an emphasis on quality over quantity. See Keller 2015.
2. Greif 2016, p. 47.
3. If you are confusing my point with that of Brooks’s “bobos,” allow me to clarify. Bobos are bohemians who grew up and got rich and wrestle with their bohemian sensibilities and bourgeois paychecks. The rise of conspicuous production actually brings together those who still don’t have any money (hipsters, bohemians) with those who have lots of it, because they share the same values and at the price point of coffee, tomatoes, and organic cotton t-shirts they can both actually afford.
4. http://reason.org/news/show/whole-foods-health-care.
5. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/05/15/paradise-sold.
6. See Molotch 2002; Zukin and Kosta 2004.
7. http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/detail.aspx?chartId=48561&ref=collection&embed=True.
8. Haughney 2013.
9. http://www.statista.com/statistics/282479/sales-revenue-of-farmers-markets-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/.
10. Haughney 2013, p. B1.
11. Alkon 2008.
12. Johnston 2008.
13. Alkon and McCullen 2011.
14. Greif 2016, pp. 50–52.
15. Daniels did note, however, that one of the biggest road blocks still today is labor practices. While there has been a lot of attention devoted to the food production, labor is still an unresolved issue. As she put it, “There is a great deal of strength in local economy, sustainability, and animal welfare groups but labor is often still behind in the public consciousness.” There have been important strides: For example, the tomato laborers in Immokalee, Florida formed a coalition and convinced buyers of the tomatoes to pay an extra penny per pound and devote that penny to their coalition to support more fair labor practices. (For an in-depth look at the tomato industry, please see Barry Estabrook’s Tomatoland [2012].) In February 2016, President Obama signed the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act, which prohibits the purchasing of food that has been produced by child labor or forced labor (as is the case with shrimp sold in the United States, much of it coming from Thailand, which is notorious for such exploitative labor practices). At the time 350 items, including Thailand shrimp, were on the list. The original Tariff Act of 1930 was created to prevent such violations but has only been used 39 times in the past 86 years because of a loophole around “consumptive demand.” If there was great demand for a particular import, it was allowed to be sold in the United States regardless of production practices. (See Mendoza 2016.)
16. Keynes 1920.
17. Moltoch 2002.
18. IOAN company website: http://www.industryofallnations.com/About-Industry-Of-All-Nations-ccid_55.aspx.
19. http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/abn/y11/m01/i11/s01.
20. “Artisanal Capitalism: The Art and Craft of Business.” The Economist. January 4, 2014.
21. Clifford 2013a.
22. Sirkin, Zinser, and Manfred 2013.
23. Clifford 2013c.
24. Segran 2016, Clifford 2013b.
25. 15 facts that can’t be ignored about U.S. manufacturing 2016.
26. Gittleson 2015.
27. Clifford 2013c.
28. Ibid.
29. Clifford 2013b.
30. Clifford 2013a.
31. Bajaj 2012.
32. Yardley 2013.
33. Barboza 2008.
34. “Made in the USA” Matters to Shoppers 2012.
35. Gittleson 2015.
38. Engels 1845.
39. For some thorough summaries of the environmental movement, key events, literature, and legislation, please see the following websites: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/timeline/earthdays/; http://www.encyclopedia.com/earth-and-environment/ecology-and-environmentalism/environmental-studies/environmental-movement; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_movement_in_the_United_States; https://www.minnpost.com/earth-journal/2013/07/25-classics-environmental-writing-help-your-summer-reading-list.
40. Inglehart 2000, p. 223.
41. Inglehart 2000.
42. http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=6225503.
43. Doherty and Etzioni 2003. Please see http://simplicitycollective.com/start-here/what-is-voluntary-simplicity-2 for general overviews on the movement and its history.
44. Etzioni 2004.
45. Taylor-Gooby 1998.
46. Grigsby 2004.
47. I must thank Harvey Molotch for his observation here.
48. Obniski 2008.
49. “Artisanal Capitalism: The Art and Craft of Business.” The Economist. January 4, 2014.
50. Barber 2013.
51. I must thank Joan Halkett for her knowledge on this topic.
52. Marx, K. (1980; Originally 1844). The economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844. New York: International Books; and SparkNotes, “The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844” Summary: First Manuscript “Estranged Labor.” Retrieved from http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/marx/section1.rhtml.
53. Rapoza 1999.
54. Ibid.
55. http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/04/22/anwr.protests/
56. Rosenberg 1999; Goldberg 1999.
57. Roberts 2010.
58. Farrell 2007.
59. “Colgate expands reach into quirky toothpaste,” 2006.
60. http://voices.yahoo.com/top-5-cosmetic-companies-test-animals-today-5584883.html.
CHAPTER 6.
LANDSCAPES OF CONSUMPTION
1. Zukin 1993.
2. North 1955; Jacobs 1969; Glaeser 2005.
3. Engels 1845; Simmel 1903; Riis 2009.
4. Jackson 1985.
5. Christopherson and Storper 1986; Sassen 2012.
6. Storper 2013, p. 72.
7. Saxenian 1994; Scott 2005; Storper 1997.
8. See Florida 2002; Drucker 1993; Bell 1973; Reich 1991.
9. Storper 2013.
10. Diamond 2016.
11. Storper 2013.
12. Krugman 2015.
13. Florida 2002.
14. Please read Kenneth Jackson’s Crabgrass Frontier (1985) for a fascinating account of the evolution of American cities and suburbs and the government policies that facilitated these outcomes.
15. Jackson 1985; Kunstler 1993.
16. Storper 2013.
17. Glaeser, Kolko, and Saiz 2001.
18. Diamond 2012. See also Berry and Glaeser 2005.
19. Sadler 2010; 2016.
20. Glaeser has a great discussion of this interplay in chapter 5 of his book Triumph of the City (2011).
21. Glaeser 2011.
22. Costa and Kahn 2000.
23. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/23/upshot/rise-in-marriages-of-equals-and-in-division-by-class.html.
24. Ibid.
25. Glaeser 2011.
26. Handbury 2012.
27. Rampell 2013.
28. Diamond 2012.
29. Lloyd and Clark 2001.
30. Silver, Clark, and Yanez 2010.
31. Wirth 1938.
32. Leher 2010.
33. González, Hidalgo, and Barabási 2008.
34. Leher 2010.
35. Please see the appendix for detailed comparative consumption patterns across cities; and the table “Consumption Patterns by Cities,” which is available online at press.princeton.edu/titles/10933.html.
36. http://streeteasy.com/blog/new-york-city-rent-affordability/.
37. Dewan 2014.
38. New Jersey suburbs: Counties of Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Hunterdon, Mercer, Middlesex, Monmouth, Morris, Ocean, Passaic, Somerset, Sussex, Union, Warren. New York suburbs: Counties of Dutchess, Nassau, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Suffolk, Westchester. Connecticut suburbs: Counties of Fairfield, Hartford, Litchfield, Middlesex, New Haven, Tolland.
39. Simmel 1903.
40. Diamond 2012.
41. Glaeser 2011.
42. Kleinberg 2012.
43. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/fashion/the-high-end-matchmaking-service-for-tycoons.html.
44. Mills 1956.
45. Please see the appendix for detailed regression results.
46. Simmel 1903.
47. Luttmer 2005.
48. Salkin 2009.
49. See also Holt 1998 and Lamont 1992.
50. Weber 1978.
51. Bourdieu 1984; Lamont 1992; Holt 1998.
52. Currid-Halkett, Lee, and Painter 2016.
53. Ibid.
54. Molotch 2003.
55. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/02/fashion/02Diary.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
56. Young 2014.
57. Douthat, R. (2016, July 3). “The Myth of Cosmopolitism.” Sunday Review: New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/opinion/sunday/the-myth-of-cosmopolitanism.html?_r=0.
58. I must thank Saskia Sassen for helping me think through the connectivity of cities around global elite consumption. One cloudy summer afternoon in London, Saskia and I met for coffee and spoke about this idea and she came up with the concept of an “invisible tissue of urbanity.”
CHAPTER 7.
“TO GET RICH IS GLORIOUS”? THE STATE OF CONSUMPTION AND CLASS IN AMERICA
1. Kahnemon and Deaton 2010.
2. Easterlin, Angelescu-McVey, Switek, Sawangfa, and Zweig 2010.
3. Summers 2006.
4. Schor 1991.
5. Raffaelli 2015.
6. “Second Wind” 2014.
7. Murray 2012.
8. http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/event/is-healthy-living-only-for-the-rich/#.Va0cPWfslzI.facebook.
9. Schor 1998.
10. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/08/22/the-lost-decade-of-the-middle-class/.
11. Lewis 2010.
12. Luce 2010.
13. PBS NewsHour 2013.
14. Ibid.
15. Luce 2010.
16. Piketty 2014.
17. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/08/22/the-lost-decade-of-the-middle-class/.
18. Freeland 2012.
19. http://www.tcf.org/work/workers_economic_inequality/detail/a-tale-of-two-recoveries.
20. Lowrey 2014.
21. Coontz 2014.
22. http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2014/05/14/median-american-savings-0/.
23. Kharas and Gertz 2010.
24. Pezinni 2012.
25. Yueh 2013; “Who’s in the Middle?” 2009; and Kharas and Gertz 2010.
26. Kharas and Gertz 2010.
27. Kharas 2011.
28. Kharas and Gertz 2010.
29. Ibid.
30. Ali and Dadush 2012.
31. www.statista.com/statistics/199983/us-vehicle-sales-since-1951/.
32. As much discussion as there is around the global middle class, there are a number of critiques suggesting that it is not nearly as omnipresent or well-to-do as some suggest. See for example Burrows 2015 and Bremmer 2016.
33. Court and Narasimhan 2010.
34. Easterlin 2007.
35. Graham and Pettinato 2001.
36. There is much debate around whether Deng Xiaoping actually made this statement, although it is regularly attributed to him. In fact, there is no documented proof he actually uttered these words, although they have become synonymous with his role in opening the floodgates of capitalism in China. See also Iritani 2004.
37. Douglas and Isherwood 1979.