The Geography of Middle Class Decline

Trump’s stunning and unexpected victory in last week’s election highlighted the overlapping divides of class and location in American politics. Almost a decade ago now, Bill Bishop pointed to the ‘Big Sort’ that is dividing Americans by income, education, and where we live. As the election showed, that big sort has become an even bigger sort as America’s middle class has declined and the nation has split into areas of concentrated affluence and even larger spans of concentrated disadvantage.

The steady erosion of America’s once sizable middle class is staggering. The middle class share of the population shrunk in 203 of 229 U.S. metros between 2000 and 2014, according to a detailed study from the Pew Research Center. Nationwide, 172 of 229 metros saw growth in affluent, upper-income households in the past decade and a half; 160 saw an increase in the share of low-income households; and roughly half, 108, experienced both.