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What's A Middle-Class Income? (Cont'd)

We recently asked our readers what income range puts a a family in the middle class. We were interested in subjective answers — what feels middle class?

Still, it's interesting to look at the numbers. So: Here's the distribution of annual income for U.S. households.

The NYT's Economix blog drew our attention to this data set, which comes from the Tax Policy Center. One striking detail that Economix points out:

Incomes grow much, much faster at the top end of the income distribution than in the middle or at the bottom end.

Planet Money Question of the Day, Part II: What jumps out at you from this chart?

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Jacob Goldstein
Jacob Goldstein is an NPR correspondent and co-host of the Planet Money podcast. He is the author of the book Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing.

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