美國中產階級規模縮小，但還是比歐洲中產有錢

皮尤研究中心稱，美國的中產階級還是比西歐人民富裕一些。

皮尤研究跟蹤了1991年到2010年間12個國家中產階級的變化情況，包括美國和11個西歐國家。大部分國家的中產階級規模都在減小，但也有少數例外。

中產階級的標準是，家庭年收入達到全國收入中位數的三分之二到兩倍之間。數據會根據家庭規模，通脹水平以及購買力平價調整，方便研究人員比較各國和各個時間段的生活成本差異。

舉個例子，2010年年收入達到2萬至6.1萬美元的美國單身人士可以稱為中產階級。四口之家的年收入要達到4.1萬至12.2萬美元左右才能稱為中產。

如果看可支配收入，美國中產家庭收入中位數為60884美元，僅次于盧森堡。但截至2010年，美國中產人數占總人口比例僅為59%，在報告各國里排名最后。

1991年美國中產人口比例還為62%，說明這些年里出現了下降。

“美國中產人數下降反映了美國跟西歐很多國家相比，收入分配不夠平衡，”報告稱，同時指出近年美國收入不均的狀況有所惡化，主要因為收入過高或過低的人口數量相對增多。

在調查國家最窮的兩個國家——意大利和西班牙，2010年家庭年收入大約2.4萬至7.5萬美元能達到中產水平。

報告列舉的國家中，愛爾蘭、法國、英國和荷蘭出現兩大趨勢：可支配收入增加且中產階級規模擴大。其中愛爾蘭最為明顯，到2010年69%的家庭都達到中產標準，20年前比例還只有60%。愛爾蘭中產階級崛起跟上世紀90年代國民經濟大發展幾乎同步，當時愛爾蘭被稱為“凱爾特之虎”。（財富中文網）

譯者：Pessy

審稿:夏林

That said, America's middle class is still richer than most of its Western European counterparts, a new report by the Pew Research Center shows.

The study documents how the middle class evolved from 1991 to 2010 in 12 countries including the U.S. and 11 nations in Western Europe. In most of those countries, the middle class has been shrinking, but there are a few exceptions.

To be considered part of the middle class, households had to earn between two-thirds to double their country’s median disposable household income. The data were adjusted for household size, inflation, and purchasing power parity to allow researchers to compare cost-of-living differences across countries and time.

A single person in the U.S., for example, would need to have earned between $20,000 and $61,000 to be considered middle class in 2010. For a family of four, it took household income of roughly $41,000 to $122,000 to make the cut.

When it comes to disposable income, middle class households in the U.S. lived on $60,884 at the median, the second-highest level after Luxembourg. But as of 2010, only 59% of Americans were in the middle class—the lowest level of any country in the report.

That’s down from 1991, when 62% of Americans were part of the middle class.

“The American experience reflects a marked difference in how income is distributed in the U.S. compared with many countries in Western Europe,” the researchers noted, adding that income inequality is widest in the U.S. because a relatively high proportion of Americans earn either high incomes or low incomes.

In Italy and Spain, two of the poorest countries on the list, it took between roughly $24,000 and $75,000 for a family of four to be considered middle class in 2010.

Of the countries featured in the report, Ireland, France, the U.K., and the Netherlands had all benefited from two positive trends: a rise in disposable income along with an expansion of the middle class. The trends were most dramatic in Ireland, where about 69% of households were considered middle class as of 2010, up from 60% two decades earlier. Ireland's rise of the middle class coincided with its rapid economic expansion in the 1990s, a period often dubbed the “Celtic Tiger.”