![]() The American upper middle class remains largely white: while 62 percent of Americans aged between 40 and 50 are white, 72 percent of those in the top fifth of the income distribution (for this age group) are white: (We restrict our analysis to this age cohort, because there are significant differences in the age profile of different racial groups).* Next we examine the racial composition of Americans in the top quintile of the household income distribution, for households headed by a person aged between 40 and 50. Whites and Asians overrepresented at the top In fact, Asians are now more likely than whites to be in the upper middle class (at least based on the figures from 2016): Again the exception is for Asians, of whom 29 percent were upper middle class in 2016, up from 19 percent in 2003. The proportion of black and Hispanic 40-somethings in the upper middle class has not increased in recent decades. ![]() These have been reasonably stable over time, with essentially no change in the proportion of whites between 19. How many are upper middle class?įirst we calculate the share of the people in each racial category who are in the top quintile. So: how white is the upper middle class (defined here, as in Dream Hoarders, as the top income quintile)? Is it less white than in the past? If so, which racial group or groups are moving onto the top ladder? These are the questions we address here. “Yes, there was recovery, but we already have signs that incomes are not keeping pace with inflation,” Kochhar says, adding that there’s too much uncertainty to predict how Americans’ finances shifted in the second year of the pandemic.In a society moving towards greater racial equity as well as greater racial diversity, we would expect to see the uppermost classes becoming more heterogeneous. While the Great Recession had a significant impact on Americans’ finances, this latest pandemic-spurred recession was so short and government support so robust, Kochhar believes it's unlikely to lead to a significant shift in incomes.īut it’s harder to tell how the recovery in 2021 will affect Americans’ standing in the various income brackets. “That likely put sort of a floor to how much incomes fell during this time period for lower- and middle-income families,” Kochhar said. But a whopping 28% of lower-income Americans experienced joblessness at some point during the first year of the pandemic.īut the effects likely would have been much worse if the federal government had not provided enhanced unemployment benefits, which nearly one in five middle-class families received, according to Pew. About 14% of middle-class Americans lost their job in 2020, while about 8% of upper-income families experienced a similar income disruption. Thanks to this shift, the income gap between upper-class Americans and everyone else widened slightly, stemming largely from pandemic unemployment.Ībout 15% of Americans suffered some form of unemployment in 2020, with the biggest impact falling on lower-income households. Last year, it was just 50%, a level that has stayed fairly consistent since the Great Recession, according to Pew. ![]() About 61% of American adults were part of a middle-class family in 1971. ![]() Pew also has a calculator that’s updated periodically that lets readers enter where they live, how much they earn, and how many are in their household to get a more personalized definition of where they fall on the income spectrum.Įven though incomes have continued to rise, those who can consider themselves middle-class (at least in a financial sense) have shrunk in the past five decades, according to Pew. The research released Wednesday is based on Pew’s analysis of the 2021 Current Population Survey’s Annual Social and Economic Supplement, produced by the U.S. Pew tends to update its definition of middle-class on an annual basis. Why the different ranges for different sizes of families? Smaller households typically require less income to support the same lifestyle as larger households, especially if that family includes children who don’t yet earn an income. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |