[tafycent]

One interesting and slightly mitigating factor to consider is that during the same period of time far more people have moved from middle to upper class or lower to middle class than have moved down in income class. Part of the reason inequality is increasing is that as a whole we're largely moving up in standard of living, but the bottom tail of the distribution isn't really moving. And I'd argue that you wouldn't really expect it to. It's a lot more difficult to drag the destitute out of poverty than to increase the standard of living for most, but not all, people