States Where the Middle Class Is Dying in the US There are many possible definitions of the middle class. One very logical definition involves dividing incomes into five quintiles. Then the income classes can be labelled as follows:
- Lowest quintile: Low Income
- Second quintile: Low Middle Income
- Third quintile: Middle Income
- Fourth quintile: Upper Middle Income
- Highest quintile: High Income
Based on income earned before taxes by the third quintile, middle class incomes in Rhode Island declined the most in the country. Incomes among middle class Rhode Island households fell by 3.1% from 2010 to 2014, while income among the state’s fifth quintile, the top 20% of state households, grew by 4.5%. This is representative, but to a greater extent, of what has happened to the distribution of income across the U.S. See next article.
Observations in this article about characteristics of the states with the greatest middle income losses (not all found in every bottom 10 states):
- More regressive taxation.
- Low or declining union membership
- High property taxes
- More than average employment decline
Econintersect: However, ranking of growth in high incomes shows little correlation with the decline in middle incomes. The ten states have an average rank of of 21 (rank 1 being the greatest high income gain). None of the ten states ranked by greatest middle income loss ranked in the top ten for high income gain (Maine had the highest rank – 11th). But neither did any of the top ten states for middle income loss rank in the bottom two quintiles for high income gain (South Carolina had the lowest rank – 29th). These observations appear to indicate that state by state the loss of middle income is not strongly associated with either (1) large high income increases or (2) general economic decline for a state.
Here are the ten states that have had the greatest middle income losses between 2010:
10. Arkansas 9. New York 8. Montana 7. California 6. South Carolina 5. Tennessee 4. North Carolina 3. Maine 2. Georgia 1. Rhode Island
