“This report focuses on the financial status and decision-making of the American middle class. It is based on two recent sources:

• An analysis of data found in the recently released Federal Reserve Board’s 2010 Survey of Consumer Finances undertaken, for Primerica and the Consumer Federation of America, by Professor Catherine Montalto of The Ohio State University.
• A recent survey commissioned and designed by Primerica and the Consumer Federation of America that was carried out by Opinion Research Corp International (ORCI), which interviewed 2015 representative Americans from all income groups on the weekends of July 12 and 19, 2012.
• The American middle class was considered, in analyzing the Fed data, to be those households with incomes between $35,600 and $94,600. Surprisingly, these households comprise only 40 percent of all households, with far more of them, 40 percent, having incomes below this level than those, 20 percent, having incomes above this level. In the ORC survey, the middle class was treated as the roughly 50 percent of all households with incomes between $30,000 and $100,000.”