Posted on 09/22/2014 8:29:16 PM PDT by Theoria
In 1988, the typical American adult was 40 years old, white and married, with a high school diploma. If he was a man, he probably worked full time. If she was a woman, she probably didn’t.
Twenty-five years later, Americans are older, more diverse and more educated. We are less likely to be married and more likely to live alone. Work is divided more evenly between the sexes. One thing that hasn’t changed? The income of the median U.S. household is still just under $52,000.
The government’s release last week of income and poverty data for 2013 brought renewed attention to the apparent stagnation of the American middle class — not just since the financial crisis hit six years ago this month, but for much of the decade that preceded the crash. The report showed that the economic recovery has yet to translate into higher incomes for the typical American family. After adjusting for inflation, U.S. median household income is still 8 percent lower than it was before the recession, 9 percent lower than at its peak in 1999, and essentially unchanged since the end of the Reagan administration.
“As a country,” New York magazine’s Annie Lowrey wrote Friday, “we peaked in the late 1990s.”
There’s little doubt that the past 15 years have been hard ones for the middle class. But median income isn’t necessarily the best way to show that. The problem is that changes in median income reflect several trends all jumbled together: the aging of the population, changing patterns in work and schooling, and the evolving makeup of the American family, as well as long- and short-term trends in the economy itself. Understanding the state of the American middle class requires digging a bit deeper than median income alone.
(Excerpt) Read more at fivethirtyeight.com ...
Households are smaller, but household income is flat?
Sounds a lot like per-capita income is up.
Lies, damned lies, and statistics...
Exactly; I have to wonder, what kind of education are members of the middle class getting? Something practical or something artsy?
When I hear about saving the middle class, lately I’m getting irritated because I wonder, just what is it that the rest of the country is supposed to do? What happened to saving yourself? Or perhaps learning a solid skill?
A lot of people in the middle class stupidly voted for Obama, which makes me think that a lot of them are asinine groupies of the latest trendy cause.
Dollars are an elusive measure of prosperity. Things that were luxuries yesterday are today’s necessities.
Ultimately prosperity boils down to how much you are worth in the wealth of a bank that does not denominate its riches in any earthly currency.
Foreigners compete for some things. But do they compete for everything? Aren’t there some things the US can do just because it is the US?
The only thing I can think of is gator wrestling.
It started before 9/11; there were already a lot of vacancies in those buildings (and it saved a lot of lives). The northeast was already in a decline; remember the mayor saying they weren’t replacing any of the 343 firemen who had been killed because they weren’t needed?
How about the stats that Whites are not marrying and establishing families as they did 30 years ago? Blacks have an illegitimacy rate of 70%. The family unit has been destroyed by the government, and not only the economy but the nation is crumbling.
“Be not deceived. God is not mocked.” A nation can kick God out of its life, but He takes His blessings with Him when He goes.
Rightly.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.