These days, the middle class of Iran still maintains its cultural conditions, but economically it has collapsed into the lower classes, which results in despair, depression, and frustration of this social class.
For more than a decade, the issue of Iran’s class divide, its intensification, and its impact on the shrinking of the middle class has been discussed. The middle class is a social class and includes many people in different occupations who are more similar to the upper class in terms of cultural values and in terms of income they are more similar to the lower class.
According to some classifications, if the upper class makes up 10% of the rich and the lower class makes up 50% of the poor; the middle class comprises the middle 40% (6th to 9th deciles) of society in terms of wealth.
The inflation rate in Iran is skyrocketing so that the destruction of the middle class is near. On the other hand, the class divide in Iran is so deep that it seems that society is being divided between the upper and lower classes.
Thus, if we consider the economy from the process that has started from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government until now, based on inflation, etc., the economic power, the purchasing power of the people, and the power to receive services have been reduced. Therefore, the people are getting weaker and weaker.
For example, a retired teacher used to receive a salary of 300 thousand tomans and the price of a golden coin was 100 thousand tomans. Now the teacher’s salary has reached 6 million tomans, but the price of a gold coin has reached 12 million tomans, and this is a sign of the decrease in people’s purchasing power. In addition, other groups face various problems to perform any type of activity.
Many people, despite being economically in the lower class, are still culturally active in the middle class. Thus, we are witnessing the fall of the middle class to the lower class of society.
Over time, with increasing inflation, the middle class becomes completely weak, and this has an impact on culture and society. That is, the weakening middle class shows the economic dilemma in the first place, but then it will affect the culture and social relations of the society with devastating impacts.
Because this group is a cultural producer and builds the culture of the society, if they have economic problems, they would no longer have enough opportunities to build progressive ideas for the society.
Things that happen positively and justly in a society are the responsibility of the middle class. Some economic experts argue that a society is a happy and prosperous society in which a small part of the society belongs to the upper and lower classes, and most of the society belongs to the middle class.
In Iran, in the current situation, since 2006, with the wrong policies of the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth governments, etc., the gap between rich and poor widened so that the middle class became thinner day by day. A very small percentage of them went to the wealthy community, and a large part of them sinks into the lower classes of society.
The problem that has arisen in Iran because of the regime’s corruption is that the class divide is not only economic. The most important problem that the middle class has found is that people who are still intellectually and culturally middle class are belonging economically to the lower class.
This contradiction between their economic, intellectual, and cultural status has made them despair, frustrated, feel no security, facing failure, depression, anxiety, and other mental disorders.
As a result, the situation of Iran’s middle class is very bad economically and culturally, because financial worries have become the priority of this group. Since they cannot meet their cultural and mental needs, this paradox has created a very bad mental state for these people, and when it expands to their families, it will cause all kinds of injuries in this class.
