The US Census Bureau defines lower class as the lowest 20% of incomes.
Pew defines it as the lowest 2/3 of the median.
If the highest income is $100, 20% is $20.
At 2/3 the median, if the median is $30, lower-class is $20.
Is there a reason they’re tying income classes to people within those classes, and not what it costs to survive within the economy?
When they say “the lowest 20% of incomes”, that’s referring to, if you were to plot the incomes of every American on a graph and then drop some dividers down every 20%, the people in the bottom one of those bins. It’s not relative to the highest income dollar amount. The wealth inequality in this country is so bad that probably 75-85% of the population is making under 20% of the highest income by pure dollar amount.