About half of U.S. adults (52%) lived in middle-income households in 2018, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of government data. Roughly three-in-ten (29%) were in lower-income households and 19% were in upper-income households at Are you in the American middle class? Find out with our income calculator.
Our calculator below, updated with 2018 data, lets you find out which group you are in – first compared with other adults in your metropolitan area and among American adults overall, and then compared with other adults in the United States similar to you in education, age, race or ethnicity, and marital status at Are you in the American middle class? Find out with our income calculator.
Step 1: Determine your place in the American population’s income distribution. Choose the option that most accurately represents your residence, your household’s size, and the money you earn. The calculator accounts for the local cost of living at Do you belong to the middle class in America? Use our income calculator to find out.
Our latest analysis shows that the share of adults who live in middle-income households varies widely across the 260 metropolitan areas examined, from 39% in Las Cruces, New Mexico, to 67% in Ogden-Clearfield, Utah. The share of adults who live in lower-income households ranges from 16% in Ogden-Clearfield to 49% in Las Cruces. The estimated share living in upper-income households is greatest in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, California (34%) and the smallest in El Centro, California (7%) at Are you in the American middle class? Find out with our income calculator.
Lower-income adults, already under significant financial pressure, have been especially vulnerable to the economic fallout from the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted April 29-May 5, 2020. The survey found that 36% of lower-income adults and 28% of middle-income adults said they had lost a job or taken a pay cut due to the coronavirus outbreak, compared with 22% of upper-income adults. In a Center survey conducted in April 2020, only 23% of lower-income adults said they had rainy day funds that could last three months, compared with 48% of middle-income adults and 75% of upper-income adults at Are you in the American middle class? Find out with our income calculator.
How the income calculator works
The calculator takes your household income and adjusts it for the size of your household. The income is revised upward for households that are below average in size and downward for those of above average size. This way, each household’s income is made equivalent to the income of a three-person household (the whole number nearest to the average size of a U.S. household, which was 2.5 in 2018).
Pew Research Center does not store or share any of the information you enter at Are you in the American middle class? Find out with our income calculator.
Your size-adjusted household income and the cost of living in your area are the factors we use to determine your income tier. Middle-income households – those with an income that is two-thirds to double the U.S. median household income – had incomes ranging from about $48,500 to $145,500 in 2018. Lower-income households had incomes less than $48,500 and upper-income households had incomes greater than $145,500 (all figures computed for three-person households, adjusted for the cost of living in a metropolitan area, and expressed in 2018 dollars) at Are you in the American middle class? Find out with our income calculator.
The following example illustrates how cost-of-living adjustment for a given area was calculated: Jackson, Tennessee, is a relatively inexpensive area, with a price level in 2018 that was 19.0% less than the national average. The San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward metropolitan area in California is one of the most expensive areas, with a price level that was 31.6% higher than the national average. Thus, to step over the national middle-class threshold of $48,500, a household in Jackson needs an income of only about $39,300, or 19.0% less than the national standard. But a household in the San Francisco area needs a reported income of about $63,800, or 31.6% more than the U.S. norm, to join the middle class at Are you in the American middle class? Find out with our income calculator.
The income calculator encompasses 260 of some 384 metropolitan areas in the U.S., as defined by the Office of Management and Budget. If you live in an area outside of one of these 260 areas, the calculator reports the estimates for your state at Are you in the American middle class? Find out with our income calculator.
The second part of our calculator asks you more questions about your education, age, race or ethnicity, and marital status. This allows you to see how other adults who are similar to you demographically are distributed across lower-, middle- and upper-income tiers in the U.S. overall. It does not recompute your economic tier at Are you in the American middle class? Find out with our income calculator.
Note: This post and interactive calculator were originally published Dec. 9, 2015, and have been updated to reflect the Center’s new analysis at Are you in the American middle class? Find out with our income calculator.
