US States by GDP per capita: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_GDP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_GDP)
Countries by GDP per capita: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita)
In: 322
Because the [income inequality in Mississippi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_income_inequality) (48.1) matches most closely the [income inequality of Honduras](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality) (48.2).
Don’t get me wrong: *the entire US* has rampant wealth inequality, our most-equal state, Utah (42.3), has that of Argentina or the Philippines (42.3), and all US states range in the 42-51 range, compared to the 30.6 of the EU average.
We can directly compare Mississippi and France by the share of income held by each quintile (as in, with incomes broken down into the bottom 20% of income earners, the 20-40%, the middle 40-60%, the 60%-80%, and the top 20%). The poorest quintile of earners in France earn 7.8% of all income; the same quinitile in Mississippi earns only 3.0% of the state’s income, so, Mississippi’s poor, are twice as poor as France’s poor. For each quintile:
* Bottom: France: 07.80%; Mississippi: 02.99%
* 20-40%: France: 12.62%; Mississippi: 08.03%
* Middle: France: 16.52%; Mississippi: 14.11%
* 60-80%: France: 21.82%; Mississippi: 22.85%
* Upper: France: 41.23%; Mississippi: 52.03%
Notice this: the middle class of France is wealthier than the American middle class. The French middle class really is rewarded better for their work than the American middle class; even paying for all that healthcare, even with all those vacation days, they’re still also wealthier.
So ultimately, the main reason why we Americans look at France and think “They’re *rich*!” in the first place, rather than looking at them and *perceiving them* as a developed country’s middle class, is because our sense of what a prospering middle class is *supposed to* look like has been skewed by the rampant economic inequality that the majority of us [don’t view as a priority](https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/most-americans-say-there-is-too-much-economic-inequality-in-the-u-s-but-fewer-than-half-call-it-a-top-priority/).
Lastly, if you scroll down at that first link to the part where it breaks down average incomes for five income brackets, Mississippi’s poorest income bracket is the third-poorest of any US region, making $9.7k yearly on average with only Louisiana ($9.4k) and Puerto Rico ($2.5k) having higher concentrations of poverty. Likewise; the middle-income bracket in Mississippi makes $45.9k; the 20-40% income bracket in Alaska makes $47.5, and in Minnesota, $46.4. So the working class in the North really do make more money than the middle class in Mississippi. However, note that even in states like Alaska and Minnesota, the middle quintile still only makes 15.39% of the state’s income; nowhere in the entirety of America is the middle class rewarded as fairly as the French middle class are.
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