Shrinking Income for America’s Middle Class — Pew Research

Income distribution has also changed. In 1970, middle class Americans took home 62% of the country’s income; that proportion had fallen to 45% in 2006 and remained at 45% in 2010. Upper income adults now receive a larger slice of the annual income pie: 46% in 2010 compared with 29% in 1970.

Some sound bites from the report:

• 62% of the middle class who say it is more difficult to maintain living standards today place “a lot” of the blame on Congress, and 54% blame banks and financial institutions while 47% blame large corporations, 44% blame the Bush administration, 39% blame foreign competition, and 34% blame the Obama administration. Only 8% thinks the middle class itself is to blame.
• Nearly 62% of the middle class said they had to cut spending in the past year and 42% say that their household’s financial situation is in worse shape now than before the recession.
• Only 43% believe their children’s standard of living will be better than their own, compared with 47% who believe it will be worse.
• Median net worth for the middle class fell by 28% over the past decade, wiping out two decades of gains.

Perhaps most interesting are the survey’s results on the Presidential election: 52% of the middle class say Obama’s policies will help them, while only 42% of the middle class say Romney’s policies will help them. People who identify themselves as middle class are more likely to be Democrats than Republicans, by a margin of 50% to 39%.

The full research report is available here.

Paul Ausick