Publication - IMF Research Bulletin, March 2017
The U.S. middle class—those households with 50–150 percent of median disposable income—has been shrinking. Middle-income households declined by 11 percentage points (from 58 to 47 percent) of the total U.S. household population between 1970 and 2014. In other words, the U.S. income distribution has been polarizing, or hollowing out, as middle-income households became richer or poorer (see Figure 1).





