Jeroen van Baar at An Educated Guess:
Obviously, there already were differences between the lower and upper middle class in 1994—otherwise you couldn’t separate the two groups. But existing differences grew by a lot between 1994 and 2018. For the upper middle class, things generally got better in that timeframe: their wealth, health, and life expectancy improved. For the lower middle class, however,
- Annual pretax resources declined by 18% between 1994 and 2018, controlling for inflation;
- Home ownership declined by 31% between 1994 and 2018;
- Health insurance coverage declined by 11% from 87% in 1994 to 78% in 2018. This means that almost 1 in 4 middle-aged adults in the lower middle class didn’t have health insurance in 2018.
These data make clear that the security offered by middle-class life—exemplified by homeownership and health insurance—is no longer within reach for millions of people in the lower half of the middle class.
More here.