Many adults experience a loss of control later in life when they've grown up poor, according to a study from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, but when they grow up middle class, then ...

It is possible to change your social class status but not without huge paradigm shifts, a great deal of intentional dedicated effort, acquiring new social and professional skills, and having mentors ...

Across the country, middle-class Americans are discovering that expenses their parents treated as routine milestones now feel like luxuries. From housing to healthcare, the affordability crisis is ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. The comment sections of TikTok’s “middle-class house tours” feature thousands of Americans arguing about what qualifies as middle ...

Across the country, people who look and live like the classic American success story are quietly running the numbers and realizing they are one surprise bill away from trouble. They may own a home, ...

This article appears in the December 2025 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here. We are living in a new Gilded Age. The first, from roughly 1870 to 1890, was marked by dramatic ...

We’re pleased to report the American middle class is indeed “hollowing out”—because ever more Americans are earning their way into higher income brackets. That runs counter to today’s populist gloom ...

"The middle class is shrinking" might be the assertion of the decade. Progressives and populists alike use it to justify nearly all government interventions, from tariffs to minimum-wage hikes to ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. kate_sept2004 / iStock.com Determining whether you’re rich or part of the middle class can be tricky. So many factors can eat into ...