Middle Class No Longer The Majority In Southern California: Report
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — The middle class is no longer the majority in Southern California.
A new report issued by the Pew Research Center this week showed 47 percent of adults in the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim area were of middle income, which is defined nationally as about $42,000 for a household of three.
The middle class is relatively small in the Los Angeles region "because the share of adults who are lower income is greater than average" compared with other U.S. metropolitan areas, according to the "America's Shrinking Middle Class: A Close Look At Changes Within Metropolitan Areas" report.
L.A.'s lower-income tier is about 37 percent of the population versus 29 percent nationally, with only 16 percent of the adult population considered to be in the upper-income tier, the study found.
At least 30 percent of adults in the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario area were also considered to be of lower income, while just 13 percent were upper income in the same region.
Median incomes also fell by as much as 10 percent in the Los Angeles and Riverside metropolitan areas, with relatively low median incomes of less than $60,000 per household in 2014.
The trends are hardly limited to the Southland: Pew researchers also found the percentage of adults living in middle-income households fell in 203 out of 229 U.S. metro areas.
"The decrease in the middle-class share was often substantial, measuring 6 percentage points or more in 53 metropolitan areas, compared with a 4-point drop nationally," the study found.
In fact, most lower-income metropolitan areas are located in the south or southwest region of the U.S., according to researchers.
