What’s your class? Here’s where your household income places you & your family
Bottom Line:Upper class, lower class, middle class – we're all familiar with them. But where do you and your family rank this year? In the Pew Research Center’s breakout of America’s “classes”, we have an idea. Pew defines upper-class as having twice the income of the national average. Likewise, lower-class is defined as living close near about half of the national average. The middle is, well the middle, and despite rumors of its demise – it's most of this country.
According to Pew here’s the breakout:
- Upper Class: 19%
- Middle Class: 52%
- Lower Class: 29%
This breakout uses old information so it’s possible that with record employment and incomes this year that could change but here’s the idea of what it takes for each class.
In South Florida (tri county) it looks like this:
- Upper Class: 14%
- Middle Class: 48%
- Lower Class: 38%
You can see the disparity with the national averages, which along with above average cost of living does make it more difficult to be poorer in South Florida than elsewhere. In terms of identifying your class – here's the average threshold for a family of three:
- Upper: $188,000
- Middle: $78,000
- Lower: $26,000
I’ll be interested to see what the future holds once we’ve accounted for the record low unemployment rates and record high wages. To be continued...
Photo by: Getty Images