The metropolitan areas with the largest shares of adults in upper-income households are mostly in the coastal areas of the Northeast and California. The metropolitan areas with the largest shares of lower-income adults are located primarily in the Southwest, with several on the southern border, such as McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, TX, and include farming communities in central California, such as Fresno, CA.
Our interactive calculator lets you find out which group you are in based on your income, your household size, where you live and the cost of living in your area. This analysis encompasses of some metropolitan areas in the United States, as defined by the Office of Management and Budget.
A metropolitan area consists of at least one urbanized area with a population of 50, or more people, plus neighboring areas that are socially and economically integrated with the core.
The same standard is used to determine the status of households in all metropolitan areas after their incomes have been adjusted for the cost of living in the area. The cost-of-living adjustment for an area was calculated as follows: Jackson, Tennessee, is a relatively inexpensive area, with a price level that is The Hawaii metropolitan area known as Urban Honolulu is one of the most expensive areas, with a price level that is The metropolitan area cost-of-living adjustment is based on price indexes published by the U.
Bureau of Economic Analysis. These indexes, known as Regional Price Parities , compare the prices of goods and services in a metropolitan area with the national average prices for the same goods and services. The national estimates presented in the analysis encompass the U. Respondents were asked to report their income received in the 12 months before the survey date.
In principle, the ACS includes income data from a total of 24 months, from January to December The income data in these surveys pertain to the preceding calendar year. Thus, the assignment of adults to an income tier in, say, is based on their household income in Differences between numbers or percentages are computed before the underlying estimates are rounded. Additional details on the methodology are available in our earlier analyses. In times of uncertainty, good decisions demand good data.
Please support our research with a financial contribution. It organizes the public into nine distinct groups, based on an analysis of their attitudes and values. Unlike the richest Americans, middle class families have most of their wealth tied up in the equity of their homes, which took a beating in the recession.
And high unemployment has left many people with little or no other income at all. At the same time that Americans had less cash to spend, they were also being hit with rising prices for some crucial items. Even accounting for inflation, it still costs more to buy a home, fill your gas tank, go to the doctor and put food on the table than it did only 10 years ago. And not only is it more expensive to live a middle-class life, it costs more to get there too.
The price of a college education -- still considered the ticket to higher wages and a better lifestyle -- has surged over the last decade, even in spite of the recession. Facing these burdens, the American Dream is undergoing stark changes, with fewer people choosing to buy homes and more young people postponing their own independent lives.
The census data showed about And that poses a challenge for the economy going forward. After all, what will the middle class and the American Dream look like another decade from now, if the younger generations still can't get their feet off the ground?
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Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. We hear it all the time: The middle class is shrinking. Wages seem to have been stagnant for decades and American families are struggling with financial insecurity. However, what exactly is the middle class? Who is in it, and who is not?
Is it shrinking? What about you—which income class do you belong to? It turns out that these questions are difficult to answer. So we are going to start with some data. The majority of the U. However, the narrow majority found in still reflects a longer-term trend of a shrinking middle class compared to the s, s, s, and s. The middle class has been both decreasing in population share and seeing its cut of the income pie shrink. The most interesting part of the Pew report, though, was its finding that the middle class is shrinking not only because more people are poor but also because more people are rich.
The shrinking middle class is less a decline in how well the population as a whole is doing. Also, there is more polarization of where growth is coming, at the extreme bottom and top of the economic spectrum. So, it is not just that people are falling out of the middle class into the lower class—they are also rising into the upper class, albeit in smaller numbers. Also, note that the state of the U. On average, and according to reports by the U. Census Bureau, the American population has grown older.
This aging makes a big difference to the median income because retirees typically live off savings and generate little income. Also, the country is significantly more diverse than it was in the s. Increases in the number of immigrants, for example, push down median incomes because immigrants, on average, make less money. According to Pew, the data suggests that the middle class has stabilized in size. See the chart from the report below, for these later figures on how the class composition has changed since the s.
However, the data also suggests that middle-class families continue to lose financial ground to upper-income families. If we take a longer view—say, from to —we see that only the income of the upper class has recovered from the previous two economic recessions. Upper-class incomes were the only ones to rise over those 16 years. This segmented rise has contributed to an ongoing trend since the s of the divergence of the upper class from the middle and lower classes. In another piece, Pew reported that the wealth gaps in between upper-income families and middle- and lower-income families were at the highest levels ever recorded.
As a growing body of research is demonstrating in ever greater detail, there is a substantial racial wealth gap in the United States. Note that Pew researchers, like the U. Census Bureau, use the term Hispanic, not Latinx. Black households did see progress, Pew reports. The percentage of lower-income White households stayed roughly the same, with increases at the top and a shrinking middle income group. And Asian households experienced increases at both the top and the bottom of the income scale.
You can see this as you look below at the Note from the report. So, the obvious follow-up question is: Where does that leave me? Into which class do I fall? Income data released by the U. Pew defines the middle class as those earning from two-thirds to double the median household income. Easy, right? Just take your household income and see where you fit, given these numbers.
The lives of families making the median income look very different, given the vastly different cost-of-living levels across the U. This lived experience can make it difficult to determine your income class status.
People in the aggregate tend to live, work, and socialize with people of similar income levels. For this reason, we often do not have accurate reference points that would help us gauge our actual class status. If you want to know exactly how you fit into the income class matrix, the Pew Research Center has a recently updated income calculator.
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