Survey: 40% of Latvians think of themselves as middle-class

 Only a small proportion of the population, 1.3%, consider themselves to be wealthy or above middle class. Respondents who are married or living with a partner, have children, earn a middle or upper-middle income and have a higher education are more likely to classify themselves as middle class.

The number of households that classify themselves as middle-class or wealthy has gradually decreased since 2019 (by four percentage points), while the number of poor households has increased (by three percentage points). Compared to neighboring countries, there is more optimism among the population in Estonia, where the majority, or 55%, of the public, see themselves as belonging to the middle class or wealthy. Meanwhile, in Lithuania, the figure is even higher at 58%.

According to Evija Kropa, expert at the Swedbank Institute of Finance: "The survey data show that everyday financial challenges make people in Latvia doubt whether their current income will allow them to have a similar quality of life as before. 45% of the respondents admit that they are worried whether they will be able to stay in their current social class in the next two to five years. The greatest instability is among those who do not consider themselves to be in the middle class. In this group, 53% of the population are concerned about their financial stability."

To qualify as middle class, people have to have an average income of €1,259 per family member. This amount has not changed significantly, as in the 2019 survey, the minimum monthly income per middle-class family member was indicated as €1,249.

Jānis Priede, Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Latvia, explains that there are objective reasons for the slight but declining middle class in Latvia.

"The economy is also cyclical. We have just faced a cost shock, and immediately it appeared in this study that the middle class feels relatively worse off, they feel that everything has become more expensive now, and that's the way it is. We had an energy crisis in the last few years, for example, the central banks' attempt to sort of fight inflation, but it also came with higher interest rates and of course, we all felt the cost of living," Priede lists the reasons.

The middle class is characterized not only by income, but also by what can be done with that income, and the most frequently mentioned are real estate, the ability to cover all mandatory monthly payments, the possibility to travel abroad for a week at least once a year, and the possibility to use private and paid medical services.

Klāvs Sedlenieks, social anthropologist and lecturer at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Riga Stradiņš University, believes that the self-assessment of households' financial situation also indicates a sense of inequality.

"This subjective feeling of middle class is related to how we each feel in comparison to others, and it is an indicator that points not to an objective but to a more or less unequal feeling. The more there is this feeling of inequality, the more there is a desire to compensate for it with some kind of thing in which we can demonstrate our middle-class belonging. The lower people's incomes, the more they spend on these ostentatious displays of status."

The survey was conducted by the pollster SKDS in June 2024, involving 1,014 residents of Latvia aged 18 to 75.