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- The size of the American middle class varies from state to state.
- Using data from the US Census Bureau, we found how many households fall between 2/3 and 200% of the median household income in each state.
- Here are the 15 states with the smallest share of households falling in that middle-income group.
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The fate of the middle class is one of the central concerns of American politics and economics. How many people fall in the middle class varies from state to state.
In an analysis of class in America, the Pew Research Center classified households as middle-income if they fell between 2/3 and 200% of the national median household income. We used that definition to find how many households in each US state had middle-class incomes.
According to the US Census Bureau's 2017 American Community Survey, the median household income that year (the most recent for which data is available) was $60,336. Using data from the Minnesota Population Center's 2017 American Community Survey Integrated Public-Use Microdata Series, we counted up how many households in each state had incomes between 2/3 of that median (or $40,224) and double that median (or $120,672).
Washington, DC, had a smaller middle class than any state, with just 36.6% of households in the capital in the middle-income bracket. Because it is not a state, we've omitted it from the following list.
Here are the 15 states with the smallest share of households falling in that middle-income bracket, along with the share of lower-income households below 2/3 the national median, and the share of upper-income households above 200%: