Gentrification and the middle classes

The middle class used to have a very clear image, they got married, Dad went to work and Mum stayed at home, they had a couple of children and lived in a nice house with a garden.

This is a study of the middle class people who were living in Hackney, an archetypal London borough, in the 1980s.

The study aims to answer one main question, is there anything distinctly different about the middle class people who live in Hackney which might explain their reasons for living there?

This raises further, larger questions about the nature of the middle class, how its position in society has changed, and what the reasons for that might be.

The sample of this study consists of just under 250 people who were interviewed in 1988 and 1989.