The Pew Charitable Trusts, Economic Mobility Project, September 2011
The idea that children will grow up to be better off than their parents is a central component of the American Dream, and sustains American optimism. However, “Downward Mobility from the Middle Class: Waking up from the American Dream” finds that a middle-class upbringing does not guarantee the same status over the course of a lifetime. A third of Americans raised in the middle class — defined here as those between the 30th and 70th percentiles of the income distribution — fall out of the middle as adults.