For instance, the vocal Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump addressed his rhetoric to middle-class men, and his surge in GOP polls was due to middle-income supporters that do not own a college degree.
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The Pew study is the latest showing lost momentum for the middle class. For example, in August, Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce released a study showing that high-paying jobs are proliferating, but not middle-income jobs.
Many analysts and policymakers regard the shift as worrisome for economic and social stability.
In early 2015, 120.8 million American adults – or 50 percent – were in middle-income households, compared with 121.3 million in lower- and upper-income households combined, the study found. That’s down from 61 percent in 1971.
After more than four decades of serving as the economic majority, the American middle class, defined as an income between $24,000 and $73,000 for a one-person household, “is now matched in number by those in the economic tiers above and below it”, reported The Los Angeles Times, citing Pew. According to the research firm, a household with three members is considered middle-class if it earns between $42,000 and $126,000 per year.
The findings were based on analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. But the Great Recession and subsequent slow recovery have shaken that image. But “if more Americans are under the idea of placing themselves at the bottom, you’ll see politicians follow”, he told Tribune. Top earners’ incomes rose 47 percent between 1970 and 2014, while middle-income workers saw an improvement of 34 percent. The median marks the halfway point. The Downey, Calif., couple, who have two children, ages 4 and 6, gross about $110,000 between them, not counting benefits, such as health care insurance. Middle-income adults in 2015 were less likely to be black or Hispanic than lower-income adults, but more likely than upper-income adults.
Rooftops of family homes near Fresno, California. Their data looks at demographic shifts in income across the country. So the average family has to have two working parents and, of course, the average family just slips further and further into debt each year and it never gets paid off because they sure don’t get raises that keep up with inflation, do they? “I feel like upward mobility keeps getting harder and harder”, she said.
The fact that the upper tier grew the most signals “economic progress”, Pew says. But research on income mobility across generations has found the U.S.as a whole lags other Western countries. And of course, strong gains from stocks and high-tech ventures have fueled incomes for some.
The bad news is that household incomes fell overall from 2000 to 2014 because of the recession in 2001 and the Great Recession of 2007-09, with the greatest loss felt by lower-income households, which fell 9 percent during that time.
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Overall household income also was redistributed over the decades: 49 percent of aggregate income went to upper-income households in 2014, up from 29 percent in 1970, while the share going to middle-income households was 43 percent in 2014, down from 62 percent in 1970. This ongoing trend, which is the inevitable result of big government and the shrinking of the private portions of our economy, was forecast 45 years ago by Robert Welch, the founder of The John Birch Society (with which The New American is affiliated). “It does suggest, even when you adjust for demographics, it’s a little troubling”, Holzer said.
