Mike good info on all counts. Still, we need to remember that the definition of 'middle class' is going to vary significantly depending on what we choose to measure. Clearly, the middle class in CENTAM was very small in 1980 and a good bit larger in 2009 by any measure. But even taking the 8% figure that was about 640,000 folk in the pool - cut it in half for the women = 320,000 and you stiil have a rather good sized pool of potential Warrant Officers. Since my criteria for the Warants was a high school diploma and I believe that there were more of those than the 8% MC, then the pool was probably bigger still. Incidentally, a HS diploma is probably a pretty good indicator of MC status in CENTAM.

Cheers

JohnT