I'd like to see a source for this. It seems counter-intuitive. A lot of the peasantry were sent to the United States as indentured servants. Most of the whit

I'd like to see a source for this. It seems counter-intuitive. A lot of the peasantry were sent to the United States as indentured servants. Most of the white poor land working classes from 17th century on. And it would be consistent with birth rates everywhere else in the agricultural world, that these people had more offspring than the wealthy. So. It just doesn't seem that this would be correct. That being said. What we call 'The Middle Class' in the United States is kind of deceiving. Class can't simply be a function of how much cash income you bring in a year. Class has more to do with where that income comes from. Those of us trading our time in exchange for money are working class, even if ( in the rarer case ) it is a greater dollar amount from a person whose primary source of income is the buying low, and selling high of commodities... such as, human labor, or pork bellies... and accumulating and reinvesting the difference.