The most interesting part of the Pew report, perhaps, was its finding that the middle class is shrinking not only because more people are poor but also because more people are rich. The percentage of lowest-income earners—those earning less than two-thirds of the median income—had grown four percentage points, from 25% to 29% of the population.1 Over that same period, though, the percentage of Americans in the highest-income households also rose by seven points since 1971, taking that group from 14% to 21% of the population.