Final answer:
The majority of Americans belong to the middle class, a socio-economic group that constitutes 60 percent of the population based on income ranges. However, the middle class has been shrinking over recent decades, despite being significantly larger than the upper and lower classes.
Step-by-step explanation:
The largest percentage of Americans reside within the middle class.
This classification is based on criteria from sociologists and economists who utilize household income to categorize social classes.
According to these criteria, the middle class consists of the 60 percent of the population with annual household incomes that fall between specific income ranges.
For a period of time, being part of the middle class held the connotation of achieving the American Dream.
However, recent studies have shown concern over the shrinking of the middle class, with its size, income, and wealth all declining since the 1970s.
Despite this trend, the middle class remains significantly larger than the lower and upper classes.
People in the United States typically identify themselves as middle class, even though there are large disparities in wealth distribution in the country.
The upper class makes up a small percentage of the population but controls a large percentage of the nation's wealth, while the lower class holds a disproportionately small share of wealth.