Simplifying, we can say that until the beginning of the twentieth century, there was no genuine middle class, in the sense that the middle 40 percent were almost as poor (in terms of their share in total property ownership) as the poorest 50 percent. Conversely, at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century, the patrimonial middle class was made up of persons who were certainly not immensely rich on the individual level but were far from being completely poor (they owned, roughly speaking, between 100,000 and 400,000 euros per adult).