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"Around the country, high-achieving recent high school grads have unpacked their shower caddies, flip flops, and smart phone chargers, and begun to settle in at elite colleges like Columbia, Amherst, and Stanford. On campus they're discovering countless resources, bright peers, and illustrious faculty. And for the rest of their lives, they'll enjoy the benefits of having a top university tattooed across their transcript and resume. But many high-achieving students are left out of this experience. Those excluded come disproportionately from families on the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. One recent investigation reported that students from the bottom 50 percent of the income distribution comprise just 14 percent of the undergraduate population at the United States' most competitive universities." This article explains some of the reasons why lower-class students with excellent grades aren't applying to elite colleges. One reason is that students fail to learn about these colleges from their local high schools, so they depend on their families to make the best decision about college. Lower-class families look first at the admission to get into the prestigious colleges, and this immediately turns them away.

"America needs a vibrant and prosperous middle class to drive economic growth. Unfortunately, with the increasing economic inequality of the past several decades, the United States has become less of a middle-class nation, and those in the middle have found themselves increasingly financially squeezed and struggling to get by. It is time that policymakers take action to reverse these trends by working to boost middle-class incomes and to ensure that the essentials of a middle-class lifestyle remain affordable. " This article shows how income inequality has become an increasing issue in the U.S. over the years. It depicts how as the issue has been increasing, America's middle class has actually been shrinking. It shows the struggles of the middle class against the issue through statistical data as well.

America's middle class has begun to shrink in the last 20 years due to the rich becoming even richer and the poor becoming even poorer. As income inequality has grown in the US, the size of the middle class has shrunk astronomically. For example, in 1979, the middle class was 57% of the US, but now, it is only 42%. This leads to a greater separation between the rich and poor

"America's middle class is struggling. As recent economic data show, middle-class household incomes remain stagnant at a near-25-year low, and the share of the nation's economic gains going to the middle class has fallen to near-record lows. Meanwhile, the costs of middle-class essentials-such as child care, higher education, health care, and housing-have rapidly increased. Beyond these well-documented facts, however, another long-term trend affecting the middle class has received somewhat less attention: As income inequality has steadily grown in the United States, the actual size of America's middle class has shrunk." This article explains various effects of income inequality on middle class citizens. It discusses the decrease in middle class households over time. Due to income inequality, less than 50% of American households can actually be considered "middle class".