An Analysis Of The Consumption And Identity Of The Middle Class

Social stratification has become increasingly obvious in China since the policy of reform and opening up.In the process of accelerating transformation of social structure,the stratum of middle class has been on the rise and gradually grew to a big group and expanded in cities,in particular,with a higher proportion across megacities including Beijing,Shanghai and Guangzhou,and an overall scale of the middle class in China more than 30%^[1].Still,the cognition of the middle-class group on their own status in this stratum varies greatly,and their sense of identification,featuring lower deviation,differs largely from those in the developed countries and developing countries over the world.The deviation in the identification of the middle class will impact their initiative to give play their social functions,thus hampering the harmonious social development.There are many factors impacting the identification of the status of the middle class.Given the close relationship between consumption and sense of identification,the article mainly explores the impact of consumption on the subjective identification of the middle class in China.Adopting the method of quantitative research,the article takes as the point of departure the Pierre Bourdieu theory of commodity consumption segmentation to build the analysis framework,taking into account the available study of scholars on identification and consumption of the middle class.By using binary logistic regression analysis,with the data of CSS（2017）for empirical analysis,the relationship between consumption and subjective identification of the middle class is analyzed in terms of the differences in consumption structure and consumption level between middle class with subjective identification and middle class with no subjective identification,and how consumption impacts the subjective identification of the middle class is analyzed.As the study shows,both the percentage of consumption expenditure and the level of consumption expenditure impact the identification of the middle class,among which the housing area has always a positive and significant impact on the middle class with subjective identification,while medical consumption,as a kind of special consumption expenditure,has an even more significant impact on the middle class with subjective identification.At last,suggestions on related policies are put forward concerning the conclusions obtained from the study and the current lower deviation of the middle class in China.