The AEI report, by Stephen Rose and Scott Winship, classified a family of three earning $133,000 to $400,000 in 2024 dollars as upper middle class. Households earning more were categorized as rich.”

Excerpt From

“More Americans Are Breaking Into the Upper Middle Class”

Rachel Louise Ensign

The Wall Street Journal

https://apple.news/AO9_uc2R0QW6dAvrovCsdDA

Lmao at Disco Fries, who is “rich” in America 2026 but doesn’t even know it.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5853684&forum_id=2...#49794761)

Research shows that ranks of higher earners have grown markedly over last 50 years, while lower rungs of middle class have shrunk

By Rachel Louise Ensign | Photography by Joseph Bui for WSJ

April 4, 2026 at 9:00 pm ET

Randy Shilling went to public high school in Corpus Christi, Texas. He graduated from Texas A&M University with a petroleum engineering degree.

For the first decade of his career, he lived in an apartment and worried about paying for vacations. Then, in his early 30s, he landed a job at a chemical plant that paid about 15% more plus bonuses, and life felt smoother. Around the same time, he bought a house on a golf course in the Houston suburb of Humble, Texas. Promotions and pay raises followed, and he saved more than $3 million for retirement. Almost without realizing it, Shilling ascended into the upper middle class.

“I view myself as an average Joe. I don’t have to have a fancy car. I don’t have to have the greatest TV,” said Shilling, who is 58. “But when I want something, I go get it.”

America’s middle class is becoming wealthier as more families scale the economic ladder into higher-earning groups. New research shows that the ranks of the affluent have grown markedly over the last 50 years or so, while the lower rungs of the middle class have shrunk.

In 2024, about 31% of Americans were part of the upper middle class, up from about 10% in 1979, according to a report released this year by the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.

There is no single, standard definition of middle class, or upper middle class, and what counts as a hefty income in one city can feel paltry in another. The AEI report, by Stephen Rose and Scott Winship, classified a family of three earning $133,000 to $400,000 in 2024 dollars as upper middle class. Households earning more were categorized as rich. The analysis looked just at incomes, not assets such as stocks or real estate.

The rise in affluence is powering an American economy built on consumer spending, and transforming the types of products and services companies offer.

These tend to be the people buying $1,700 bassinets that rock their babies to sleep, artisanal food for their dogs, pricey gym memberships, luxury cruises and spots on business-class airplane cabins.

These are also people who fret about the high cost of top colleges, and might still feel strained by rising expenses. (Yale University this year offered free tuition to students from households earning up to $200,000.)

The gains span generations. Many baby boomers, born to parents who grew up in the Great Depression, are living well on their savings, aided by steady Social Security checks and decades of stock-portfolio gains that they can now tap. Millennials, who everyone worried would be permanently set back by the 2008-09 financial crisis, are earning solid incomes, buying homes and surpassing their parents.

Many families are surprised to find that they have moved into this new economic tier, and see themselves as comfortable, not rich. They tend to have jobs that are white collar but not flashy—think accountants, not tech founders.

This doesn’t mean that all Americans are climbing the ladder. Entrenched inflation and higher prices on major necessities have pushed many families closer to the financial edge, or locked them out of homeownership. Those costs weigh on high-earning families too, and for many are the reason they don’t feel wealthy.

The AEI report divided families into five different groups by income. Three groups were in the middle: lower middle class, core middle class and upper middle class.

The authors found that more families now fall into the two highest-earning groups—upper middle class and rich—and fewer fall into the three lower-earning categories.

In 2024, about 19% of American families were considered “poor or near poor,” according to the AEI report, down from about 30% in 1979. The report defined that group as a family of three earning about $40,000 or less in 2024 dollars.

The report’s analysis used the federal poverty guidelines to determine which group a family fell into. The economists considered a family earning between five times and 15 times the poverty guideline to be in the upper middle class—thus their parameters of $133,000 to $400,000.

Upper-income groups are swelling because wages have grown faster than prices over time, especially for white-collar workers with college educations, said Winship.

A college degree gives a family a very good shot at being in this group: 55% of people with a bachelor’s degree and 68% with a graduate degree are upper middle class or rich, according to a separate 2021 analysis using a similar methodology that Rose, the AEI study’s co-author, produced at the Urban Institute as a nonresident fellow.

Married or cohabitating couples have a better shot at getting into the upper middle class—in part because they often have two incomes, and can split costs and pool their savings. More than 80% of people in the upper middle class and rich categories were in married or cohabitating households, the Urban Institute analysis found.

Gabriel Martinez’s first job out of college in 2015 was in logistics and paid $50,000 a year. The 34-year-old now earns $180,000 a year at a big technology company after a series of raises and promotions, with bonuses and stock-based compensation on top of that.

Martinez went into debt to buy an expensive car early in his career. His wife, Anna, took on more than $100,000 in student loans to pay for her master’s degree. He downgraded to a cheaper car and the couple cut expenses—such as going out to eat or buying clothes—to pay off her student loans.

Together, they now have a flush emergency savings fund and own a 1,700-square-foot home in Boerne, Texas, a town outside of San Antonio. They tithe 10% of their income to their church and can easily cover one-off costs, like a $4,000 medical bill from the birth of one of their two young children or a $1,200 HVAC system repair.

“We both grew up in households where costs like that were catastrophic,” said Martinez, whose father earned less than $40,000 a year working for the state of Texas. “I’m very grateful to live in a nation where I don’t have to stay where my dad was.”

Instead of worrying about paying for groceries, Martinez said, they worry about how to make sure their children aren’t spoiled in a town where some teens drive luxury cars to high school.

A Pew Research Center analysis using a different methodology also discovered that the share of American families in the higher-income group is growing. The analysis found that in 2023, 19% of Americans fell into an “upper income” group, up from 11% in 1971.

Pew classified upper income as those earning more than twice the median household income, so more than roughly $200,000 or more for a family of three in 2024. While inflation-adjusted incomes grew substantially for all groups, they rose much faster for the well-off families.

“Everybody is doing better, but the upper income households are especially,” said Richard Fry, a senior researcher at Pew. This group has also experienced particularly big gains in wealth thanks to rising home prices and a stock market that increased in recent years.

Even those who are happy with their own personal finances are often pessimistic about the broader economy.

Shilling and his wife, Nanci Shilling, who works in an accounting department at a different chemical plant, bring in about $220,000 a year. He drives a 2015 Ford F-150 but splurged on an in-ground pool about five years ago.

Shilling thinks he undeniably is doing better than his own parents, who didn’t go to college. But he isn’t confident that son Blake, a 23-year-old student living at home, will be able keep the upward trajectory going. “I think they’re going to struggle,” he said of his son’s generation, citing the current cost of living.

While upper-middle-class Americans can easily afford clothes and electronics, many in it still feel stretched when it comes to paying for the pillars of a prosperous life, such as owning a home and sending their children to college.

Laura Shields, 46, and her husband took on credit card debt early in their careers. Their first experience with homeownership left them with a $25,000 loss when they sold their property in the depths of the 2008-09 financial crisis. Covering monthly child-care costs for their two sons meant living paycheck to paycheck.

Shields, who lives in New Jersey, started feeling more comfortable financially only during the pandemic when, like many other Americans, she got raises at work and her expenses went down. The couple earn about $240,000 a year now, which has allowed them to pay down a lot of their credit card debt and build savings. They can now afford extras such as a school trip to Europe.

Their older son will be heading to college in less than two years and they told him that they will cover the cost of an undergraduate degree as Shields’s parents did for her. But that almost certainly will require taking out loans. “I try not to think about it,” Shields said.

Chris Wogan, 76, grew up in a row house in Philadelphia with seven siblings in the 1950s and 60s. His parents, he recalled, struggled to buy him a baseball glove. Wogan worked as a judge and a Pennsylvania state representative after attending college and law school.

Wogan brings in about $175,000 a year from pensions, with additional income from stock market investments and Social Security on top of that. He and his wife, Susan, have taken several Viking cruises in Europe and just bought a home in a Pennsylvania retirement community with an indoor pool and an outdoor pool.

“I always thought of myself as ‘middle’ middle class,” he said. “I probably did better than I thought I would do.”

--

Absolutely infuriating gaslighting attempt jfc

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5853684&forum_id=2...#49794772)

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≈30.7% of adults who are overweight (BMI 25–29.9)

Source: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES)

This is not exactly 31%, but extremely close and often rounded to “about one‑third.”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5853684&forum_id=2...#49794768)

Why so invested in the state of your homeboy's balls, friend?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5853684&forum_id=2...#49794811)

I think you should have to be 21 for plastic surgery

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5853684&forum_id=2...#49794835)

What kind of "HVAC system repair" can you get for $1200? I had some clown quote $400 to replace a capacitor so I shooed him away and ordered one (along with a couple of spares) for $20 each ... so what does the $1200 get? Fixing a $60 part?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5853684&forum_id=2...#49794808)

LMAO

Imagine still being super into "political parties" ("thank goodness I'm smart enough to support the COOL political party that is GOOD and does the RIGHT stuff") in 2026 Weimerica. Team Blue Good, Team Red Bad!

And then not only that but you're also convinced that you're extremely intelligent and shrewd and you basically have it all figured out, unlike all of those other deluded retards out there on the internet.

Actual IRL chuckle, thanks old man.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5853684&forum_id=2...#49794895)

GOPe are GC hacks but at least they are earnest about it. dems are GC hacks but do performative kente cloth kneeling. its amazing that after obamas huge win on a leftist platform combined with a supermajority giving them carte blanche, and all they did is GWB 2.0 (now with baby tray racial grievances!) that people still think they are oppossed to the GC status quo.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5853684&forum_id=2...#49795416)

More than $400k is the upper middle class.

You'd think WSJ would know this.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5853684&forum_id=2...#49794962)

The meaning of middle class is evolving. In some aspects it's regressing to the 19th century middle class breakdown.

No disputing that the American middle class with the incomes in the WSJ article are doing extremely well and richer than ever. What it also means is that a much larger group of people are chasing after the same limited basket of goods re neighborhoods and schools/colleges, which is why housing costs in nice areas and education costs have exploded. Those who successfully get there are in the $400k+ bracket and why the typical family colonial in a nice UMC suburb with good schools now goes for at least $1M in much of the country, even in the better flyover suburbs. You'd need a $400k income to buy a $1M house. And also why private schools are so expensive these days relative to 30 years ago. The rate of inflation in housing and education costs has outstripped official inflation, but most likely mirrors the growth in the "upper middle class." To get to the point, to have the lifestyle of a UMC family circa 1995 you'd need at least $400k.

Will say once you factor out housing/edu costs, then life is probably very good for the WSJ's "UM". Travel costs are never as cheap as they've been, a great deal of materialism is never as affordable. Food is shockingly cheap relative to income these days. 401ks and investment funds are fat and growing. It's good times.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5853684&forum_id=2...#49794983)

Just look at the UK if you need a reminder of what Class is. It has nothing to do with “income”. I could make $800,000k per annum and I’d still be Scum.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5853684&forum_id=2...#49795108)

under 600k hhi is poverty wages 800k hhi is barely middle class

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5853684&forum_id=2...#49795496)

Economic ability to pay for college for their kids, elite colleges if smart. Paid off house in nice area. Able to build up some inheritance for their kids. ($500K+)

Middle Class:

Can pay for college for their kids at reasonable schools. Paid off house in reasonable area or making payments in nice area. Can pay for their own retirements and funerals, maybe enough left over for a nice budget vacation for their kids. ($200K+)

Working class:

Job in the trades or for the government, eventually retires into social security disability at 30.

Poor:

Drugs

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5853684&forum_id=2...#49795128)

UMC: 3% tax-advantaged mortgages leveraged into things with double digit returns in tax-advantaged investment accounts or businesses

MC: pre-paying your mortgage or buying cash because david ramsey told you to

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5853684&forum_id=2...#49795428)

Snorted out loud at this.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5853684&forum_id=2...#49795527)

edit: I see now – they're not DIRECTLY basing it on general inflation; they're defining the categories relative to the poverty line. But my point stands because that number hardly reflects those costs either.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5853684&forum_id=2...#49795567)

If you can't afford a house or everything is $1,000,000k and you make $27,000k then let me explain it for you, 1.) Strict Stratification and the death of the Normal Bro, 2.) you suck, and/or 3.) The Clique System will make a Woman your boss, Kamala POTUS, a negresstard on the supreme court, a Jew owns everything, everything is Fake except Engineering which is Indian.

https://www.reddit.com/r/OptimistsUnite/comments/1howp58/even_accounting_for_inflation_every_social_class/

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5853684&forum_id=2...#49799232)

In my situation specifically, I could be doing a lot better if I'd been wiser. Definitely a skill issue. But I'm fortunate – I was able to go to a good private school without debt (cuz my UMC parents obsessively saved money for my education starting when I was born) and get high-paying jobs and stuff. But I'm about as lucky as you can get without being born into a rich family. I know many people as smart as me (and 100x more hard-working) who struggle because they didn't have those opportunities.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5853684&forum_id=2...#49799282)

They don't do any fancy investments either and weren't particularly interested in accruing wealth but they also had decent salaries and weren't extravagant spenders

Not sure what grandparents have to do with it

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5853684&forum_id=2...#49799365)