CNNMoney has a story titled Middle class dropouts. It begins:
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Nearly one third of Americans who were raised in the middle class dropped down the economic ladder as adults -- and that's before the Great Recession hit.
"Being raised in the middle class is not a guarantee that you'll have that same status as an adult," said Erin Currier, project manager at Pew's Economic Mobility Project. "With all the economic turmoil in the past four years, there's good reason to think that downward mobility is more severe."
Later it says:
The middle class is defined as those between the 30th and 70th income percentile.
Well, if 33% of the people in the 30-70th percentile range dropped lower, then someone from either below or above moved in! That means some combination of people in the 0-30th percentiles moved up, and some of the people in the 70-100th percentiles moved down (and in the latter case, that means some people moved up from lower tiers into the top tiers.)
By the story's definition, the middle class can't decline (or grow)! It is statistically impossible for them to change as a proportion of the whole. The underlying implication of this story is that there is significant churn going up and down the ladder, but the story lifts out one isolated number to support a predetermined news angle. In other words, this is really bad reporting.
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