NOBODY HAS IT HARDER THAN THEIR FATHER DID:

 It is true that the middle class has been shrinking, but Pew points out that it is not because Americans have been getting poorer.

In fact, one the main reasons there are fewer middle-class Americans is because so many people have moved into upper-income households over the past 40 years. The share of American adults living in upper-income households jumped from 14 percent in 1971 to 21 percent in 2015.

Pew also notes there has been an increase in the proportion of Americans living in the lower income class of four percentage points, however, they are still much better off in dollars and cents terms than their equivalents in the 1970s.

Lower income households have enjoyed a rise is median earnings of 28 percent over the past 44 years, according to Pew. The median income of the middle class soared by 34 percent, 0r $18,710, between 1970 and 2014. The highest income households saw the largest gains with 47 percent.

These numbers also don't account for the huge increase in the quality of consumer goods and their massive price declines. Furthermore, while the middle class may be holding a lower share of the nation's household income than it did in the 1970s, the economy is as whole much bigger, meaning the share they do hold is significantly larger.

The Pew Research is timely, coming hot on the heels of a report from the Manhattan Institute (MI) claiming American workers have done far better over the past 40 years than many critics of income inequality have suggested.

The MI paper challenges the view that the link between workers productivity and wages has been broken. Author of the paper and Walter B. Wriston Fellow at the MI Scott Winship, writes that between "1997-2011, productivity rose by 35 percent, aggregate compensation rose by 32 percent, median hourly compensation increased by 20 percent, median female pay climbed by 25 percent, and median male pay grew by 18 percent."

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