“America is full of high-earning poor people” is an interesting article, with lots of charts and statistics, on how poor even high earning households are in America. The problem is, of course, not unique to the United States.
The fact that the average upper-middle-class household has just $12,200 in non-pension financial wealth is disturbing. Even worse, within that group, about 25% of the higher earning population had only $3,200 in 2013. It’s no wonder one quarter of all American households couldn’t come up with $2,000 if they faced an emergency—it’s not just low earners.