Understanding Family Social Class Stratification
Setting aside extreme class divisions, in a broadly applicable sense, Chinese families can be categorized into four tiers—A, B, C, and D—based on income.
What defines Tier D?
For 600 million people, their family's average monthly income per capita is less than 1,000 yuan.
Take a typical rural household that relies on farming—not large-scale mechanized agriculture, nor specialized livestock operations, but just a few modest acres of land. In such a family, the two elderly parents effectively have zero income. If there are two children, they also contribute nothing. One spouse stays home to care for the elderly and children while farming; if the other spouse works in the city and earns no more than 6,000 yuan per month, the per-capita monthly income falls below 1,000 yuan. Alternatively, if both spouses work in the city but earn low wages—say 4,000 yuan and 2,000 yuan respectively—and they have two left-behind children, the per-capita monthly income still hovers around 1,000 yuan.
That’s 600 million people.
Tier C.
For Tier C, the per-capita monthly income is around 3,000 yuan. Imagine a couple both working in the city: the husband has become a team leader at Foxconn, earning 8,000 yuan a month; the wife earns 5,000 yuan; and the elderly parents chip in with part-time work in the countryside, adding another 2,000 yuan each month. With only one child, the entire five-person household totals 15,000 yuan, or under 3,000 yuan per person. Or consider a courier husband earning 10,000 yuan a month and a wife doing odd jobs for 5,000 yuan, with unemployed elderly parents and one child—that also lands you at roughly 3,000 yuan per capita.
How many people fall into this category? About 400 million.
400 million plus 600 million already totals 1 billion.
Moving up, we hit Tier B, where per-capita monthly income sits around 5,000 yuan.
Consider a township head earning 10,000 yuan a month, his wife working in a county water conservancy bureau office for 7,000 yuan, and both sets of parents contributing 6,000 yuan in pensions combined. With one child, the five-person household brings in 25,000 yuan monthly—5,000 yuan per capita. Or look at it from an urban perspective: a regular programmer husband earning 15,000 yuan, a QA wife making 10,000 yuan, no income from elderly parents back home, and one child. Again, that’s 5,000 yuan per person.
This bracket covers about 250 million people.
Above that lies Tier A.
These families enjoy a per-capita monthly income of 10,000 yuan. Only about 150 million people reach this level.
For instance, a higher-income professional couple: the husband is a manager bringing in 30,000 yuan, the wife a team lead at 20,000 yuan, no parental income, and one child. That’s 50,000 yuan in monthly household income, or 10,000 yuan per capita. Or both spouses are civil servants, combining for 35,000 yuan monthly, plus 15,000 yuan in parental pensions, with one child—also landing at 10,000 yuan per person.
Asset ownership and business ventures are what can shift these numbers.
Passive income from assets is easy to calculate. Say you own a fully paid-off, non-primary-residence property worth 10 million yuan. That could generate an additional 15,000 yuan a month in rent. For a five-person household, that boosts per-capita income by another 3,000 yuan.
A business owner can single-handedly lift their family into Tier A—or plunge the entire household into Tier D through bankruptcy.
So when you have little to lose, take the gamble. But once you’ve established a foundation, focus on acquiring more assets. Each generation should strive to surpass the last.