{"id":21561,"date":"2026-02-20T15:44:28","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T15:44:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=21561"},"modified":"2026-02-20T15:44:29","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T15:44:29","slug":"yes-the-middle-class-is-shrinking-because-its-moving-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=21561","title":{"rendered":"Yes, the Middle Class Is Shrinking\u2014Because It&#8217;s Moving Up"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>&#8220;Most studies define the middle class relative to the national median, which makes the dividing line between haves and have-nots rise automatically as the country gets richer. Rose and Winship instead use a benchmark of fixed purchasing power, so that if real incomes (those adjusted for inflation) rise, more people are shown moving into\u2014or beyond\u2014the middle class in a meaningful sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Under this approach, the &#8220;core&#8221; of the middle class does indeed shrink modestly. But crucially, the middle class shrinks because people are moving up the income ladder, not because they&#8217;re falling down. Since 1979, the share of Americans in the upper-middle class has roughly tripled\u2014from about 10 percent to 31 percent\u2014while shares of those considered lower middle class or poor fell substantially.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/reason.com\/2026\/01\/15\/yes-the-middle-class-is-shrinking-because-its-moving-up\">https:\/\/reason.com\/2026\/01\/15\/yes-the-middle-class-is-shrinking-because-its-moving-up<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Most studies define the middle class relative to the national median, which makes the dividing line between haves and have-nots rise automatically as the country gets richer. Rose and Winship instead use a benchmark of fixed purchasing power, so that if real incomes (those adjusted for inflation) rise, more people are shown moving into\u2014or beyond\u2014the middle class in a meaningful sense.<\/p>\n<p>Under this approach, the &#8220;core&#8221; of the middle class does indeed shrink modestly. But crucially, the middle class shrinks because people are moving up the income ladder, not because they&#8217;re falling down. Since 1979, the share of Americans in the upper-middle class has roughly tripled\u2014from about 10 percent to 31 percent\u2014while shares of those considered lower middle class or poor fell substantially.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/reason.com\/2026\/01\/15\/yes-the-middle-class-is-shrinking-because-its-moving-up\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[217,165,366,364,1277],"class_list":["post-21561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-economics","tag-economy","tag-income","tag-middle-class","tag-wealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21561"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21562,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21561\/revisions\/21562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}