Larger incomes and increased leisure time among middle- class workers fostered a culture of consumption and popular amusements in American cities. The wealthiest Americans debated whether and how to use their fortunes to improve society.

The middle class included everyone who was a merchant, a doctor, a university graduate, or in the middle management of the Church. These were the people who really saved Europe from the Middle Ages, and their size and importance grew as the period went on.

The next class in the Renaissance days was the middle class. The middle class was not a very wealthy class but the wealth depended upon the hardwork they put in their jobs. Sometimes, the middle class people moved up the pyramid and became the merchants by doing well in their professions.

From 2011 to 2019, the global middle-class population increased from 899 million to 1.34 billion, or by 54 million people annually, on average. The pandemic is estimated to have erased a year of growth, leaving the global middle-class population nearly unchanged from 2019 to 2020.

In the United States, middle-class income is declining while many goods and services are increasing in price, such as education, housing, child care, and healthcare. Since 2015, middle-class Americans comprise less than half, or 49.9%, of the country’s population, down from 61% in 1971.

Middle-skill jobs have been declining across the U.S. since the 1980s in a shift mostly felt by non-college educated workers (and the majority of American adults do not have a four-year degree).

As of September 2018, though, Pew reported that 52% of American adults were in the middle class, according to 2016 income figures. There were 19% in the upper class and 29% in the lower class. According to Pew, the data suggest that the middle class has stabilized in size.

The middle classes are getting squeezed particularly hard by the rising costs of education, health care and housing. Real, disposable incomes for the middle class have not grown since the middle of last decade, while incomes for the top 10% are hitting new highs, the OECD calculates.

The median money income of households in the United States was $16,530 in 1979, an increase of 10 percent over the 1978 median of $15,060. However, after adjusting for the 11.3-percent increase in prices between 1978 and 1979,1 the 1979 median was slightly lower than the 1978 median.

The median income of households in the United States in 1967 was $7,200, whereas the mean income for households was $8,200. An estimated 11.9 million, or 19.7 percent, of the 60.4 million households in the Nation received money income under $3,000 in 1967.

$49,764 per year