A slight majority of U.S. adults (52 percent) lived in middle-class households in 2016, according to a new report from Pew Research Center. That might seem like only a bare improvement from the previous reporting period in 2011, when the figure was 51 percent, but in one sense, it's a noteworthy reversal: Based on Pew's previous studies, the size of America's middle class had been in a steady decline since 1971, when 61 percent of U.S. adults fell into that category.
Daniel B. Kline | The Motley Fool