America’s upper middle class has doubled in size since 1979, a new study published Tuesday finds, representing a major step forward in living standards for U.S. workers but also a possible explanation for the discontent of the majority of people who have seen slower income growth.
In an analysis published by the Urban Institute Tuesday, scholar Stephen Rose examines Census data to find that the upper middle class has grown from under 13 percent of the U.S. population in 1979 to nearly 30 percent in 2014, siphoning off families from the lower classes. Furthermore, the upper middle class now earns more than half of all income, up from 30 percent.
The expansion of the upper middle class is “mixed” news that has been overlooked amid the focus in recent years on the rise of the “1 percent,” Rose said.
The good news is that the median income for adults is up 30 percent, correcting for inflation using an index preferred by researchers.
The bad news, however, is that the lower classes have seen significantly slower income growth than the rich and the upper-middle class, a dynamic that Rose suggested could cause resentment and might be behind the strong support for outsider political candidates such as Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.
“I think that people understand that they’ve got more, but it can feel like less because you can see what other people have,” Rose said.
The middle class is a nebulous and politically charged concept. Rose defines the “upper middle class” as a family of three earning between $100,000 and $350,000 annually, adjusted for inflation over time. He chose the $100,000 cutoff at the bottom because it is more than four times the federal poverty level, a marker that the government has used in the past to define families with “high budgets.” Families earning more than $350,000 a year are in the top 2 percent of earners, matching the share of people who say in polls that they consider themselves rich.
Although that definition of middle class is fairly arbitrary, Rose found that it didn’t make much of a difference for his analysis if he adjusted the income cutoffs either way.
The difference is not simply a matter of income, Rose found. Instead, he sees the upper middle class separate from the middle class, the lower-middle class and the poor by marriage rates, professional occupations and even life expectancies.
The biggest difference, however, appears to be education: Americans with college degrees have not only better odds at economic success, but also job security. The 69 percent of people who are not among the “rich” or the “upper middle class” end up feeling as they are left excluded from a club and that “they’re not respected and talked down to,” Rose said.
That feeling, in turn, could spark anti-establishment political views. “Clearly there’s an upsetness here,” Rose said.
Other advanced countries, such as those in Europe, Japan and especially other English-speaking nations, have seen less of a bifurcation between the upper middle class and the rest of the people, Rose noted.
