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Turns out the American middle class didn't die
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There’s a peculiar kind of vertigo that comes with being an affluent American in 2026.
Key facts
- The share of families in the “upper-middle class”, defined as those earning between roughly $133,000 and $400,000 annually for a family of three, tripled from 10% in 1979 to 31% in 2024
- Median family income, adjusted for inflation and declining family size, rose 52% between 1979 and 2024
- Even families at the 10th percentile of income were roughly 30% better off in 2024 than their counterparts in 1979
- At the 10 th percentile it rose by 29%, and at the median it rose 52%
Summary
By nearly every historical metric, you are living in spectacular abundance. This is not an illusion. The AEI report, by labor economist Stephen Rose and Scott Winship, a senior fellow at the institute, makes a straightforward and data-heavy argument: the core middle class has shrunk not because Americans have been left behind, but because so many have moved up. “It is simply inaccurate to characterize the ‘shrinking’ middle class as reflecting diminished economic security rather than material progress,” Rose and Winship wrote. To understand what the AEI is measuring, it helps to zoom out.