Posted on 05/14/2016 1:07:34 PM PDT by Kaslin
The rich get richer, the poor get poorer … but what happens to the middle class? It depends, according to a new study this week from Pew. In some metropolitan areas, the middle class move into the richer category, while in others it declines into the poorer. However, Pew’s research makes it clear that the middle class is narrowing:
The American middle class is losing ground in metropolitan areas across the country, affecting communities from Boston to Seattle and from Dallas to Milwaukee. From 2000 to 2014 the share of adults living in middle-income households fell in 203 of the 229 U.S. metropolitan areas examined in a new Pew Research Center analysis of government data. The decrease in the middle-class share was often substantial, measuring 6 percentage points or more in 53 metropolitan areas, compared with a 4-point drop nationally.
The shrinking of the middle class at the national level, to the point where it may no longer be the economic majority in the U.S., was documented in an earlier analysis by the Pew Research Center. The changes at the metropolitan level, the subject of this in-depth look at the American middle class, demonstrate that the national trend is the result of widespread declines in localities all around the country.
The direction of the erosion nearly evenly splits the metropolitan statistical areas Pew studied. The middle class dropped in 203 of 229 metropolitan areas, while the percentage of lower-income households increased in 160 — and the percentage of upper-income households increased in 172 others. In 108 metropolises, those trends overlapped in having both increase.
What about across the US as a whole? The trend seems murkier when Pew frames it on the national level rather than by metropolitan areas. Middle income households still remain a majority overall in the US, but the percentage has dropped from 55% in 2000 to 51% in 2014. Lower-income households ticked up a percentage point from 28% to 29%, but upper-income households went up from 17% to 20% in the same 14-year period. That would suggest that the economic shift has been to the positive, and that the middle class may be more moving up than moving down.
However, that too is a bit deceptive — because as Pew points out, those percentiles are based on median household incomes. And median incomes have been moving downward over that fifteen-year period:
The widespread erosion of the middle class took place against the backdrop of a decrease in household incomes in most U.S. metropolitan areas. Nationwide, the median income of U.S. households in 2014 stood at 8% less than in 1999, a reminder that the economy has yet to fully recover from the effects of the Great Recession of 2007-09. The decline was pervasive, with median incomes falling in 190 of 229 metropolitan areas examined. Goldsboro ranked near the bottom with a loss of 26% in median income. Midland bucked the prevailing trend with the median income there rising 37% from 1999 to 2014, the greatest increase among the areas examined. 4
In other words, households may have moved from the middle- to upper-income tier simply by staying put or perhaps increasing income only a modest amount. Those households that dropped into the lower-income tier from the middle lost even more income than the median dropped, outpacing the economic downturn and losing even more ground than these comparisons suggest.
Some of these issues relate to local economies, some to the national stagnation that has followed the Great Recession. But this study makes a good data point to explain the political environment of this cycle and the anger that has fueled it. Perhaps nothing might explain it better than the fact that the greater DC area ranks third among the percentage of metropolitan areas with the highest percentage of upper-income households (32%), behind Midland, Texas and the Bridgeport, Connecticut region. The rich get richer … and the powerful, too.
rich able to tap into the globalist economy
middle class are realced with SLAVE LABOR
china
india
mexico
scumbags like vicente fox exploit the beaners
that is why they flock to the ussa
mexicans should wake up and revolt
our factory workers are now burger flippers
File under: WHY TRUMP IS WINNING (Sanders too!)
Thanks to the Political class this nation is on the rocks.
There is a DIRECT INVERSE RELATIONSHIP between the SIZE OF GOVERNMENT and the SIZE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS.
The smaller the government, the larger the middle class, The larger the government, the smaller the middle class.
That’s a fact, Jack.
#1 political job: cut 80% of the $4 trillion mostly unconstitutional federal government, put it into its constitutional cage, and KEEP IT THERE!
Yeah, I remember being part of the middle class. It was nice not having to constantly worry.
My father, bless his soul use to tell me, “The rich get richer, the poor get poorer and the middle class pays for it.”
Socialism is a two class society and Communism is when the rich socialists who thought they were the truly for the people are exterminated. These rich socialists are the ones the alligator eats last.
The Obama recession.
Here our factory workers are now personal care attendants paid for by the government.
Not eroding.
Being intentionally plowed under is more like it.
The free traitors know exactly what they are doing.
Factors Driving the US Toward a Class System
http://hubpages.com/education/Factors-Driving-the-US-Toward-a-Class-System
I read the linked article, and fully comprehend the points outlined, thank you. Question: Why? Why is this happening?
Social engineering by the left which is Leftist politicians over many years nudging the system in the direction that has caused that which we are concerned today.
“Thanks to the Political class this nation is on the rocks.”
And you can’t have a democracy without a strong middle class.
The dumbing down has had its desired effect. Alinsky model instituted.
Break down the family and social institutions so that people are atomized, and the state is all powerful because it has no rivals.
Yes.
Me too.
The good old days..
I got tired of feeding Obama’s beast, so went `mini-Galt’ (I was no captain of industry) a few years ago.
We manage to pay property taxes, insurance and bills, but I’m ready for Trump.
Obama has queered everything he touched, while metastasizing the national debt.
2017 and on will be better. Hang in there.
To me this whole “transgender” nonsense is just another fault line by which to divide people; it could have arisen at any time over the past eight years under our first “gay president”, but it was saved for now because Americans of all colors are uniting behind the Trump/Sanders movements (against the establishment). Now the establishment has to splinter the opposition along another front...
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