America’s middle class has been steadily shrinking since 1971, and now this segment of the U.S. population is around the same size as the layers above and below it combined, anew analysis by Pew Research Center finds. It’s “a demographic shift that could signal a tipping point,” Pew says.
In 2015, middle-income Americans (adults in a three-person household with annual income between $42,000 and $126,000) made up about half of the U.S. population, down steadily from 61 percent since 1971. In absolute numbers, this middle-income band now contains around 120 million people, which is almost the same as the total number of Americans in the other economic tiers combined (121 million).
Presidential candidates from both parties have decried this trend as a significant economic strain on the country—and they’re right. The bands at the two extremes are growing the fastest, indicating a widening income inequality. The share of Americans in the lowest-income segment has grown from 16 percent in 1971 to 20 percent in 2015; the richest segment, meanwhile, has more than doubled from 4 percent of the U.S. population to 9 percent over that period. The upper-middle and lower-middle classes have remained steady.
[For more of this story, written by Tanvi Misra, go to http://www.citylab.com/work/20...e-inequality/419796/]
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