The Germantown area of Philadelphia was formerly considered solidly middle class but is now mostly low income. "Everything started going down in the dumps," a longtime resident said.
Posted on 11/17/2011 8:54:15 AM PST by dragnet2
WASHINGTON — The portion of American families living in middle-income neighborhoods has declined significantly since 1970
The findings show a changed map of prosperity in the United States over the past four decades, with larger patches of affluence and poverty and a shrinking middle.
In 2007, the last year captured by the data, 44 percent of families lived in neighborhoods the study defined as middle-income, down from 65 percent of families in 1970. At the same time, a third of American families lived in areas of either affluence or poverty, up from just 15 percent of families in 1970.
The study comes at a time of growing concern about inequality and an ever-louder partisan debate over whether it matters.
Much of the shift is the result of changing income structure in the United States. Part of the country’s middle class has slipped to the lower rungs of the income ladder as manufacturing and other middle-class jobs have dwindled, while the wealthy receive a bigger portion of the income pie. Put simply, there are fewer people in the middle.
But the shift is more than just changes in income. The study also found that there is more residential sorting by income, with the rich flocking together in new exurbs and gentrifying pockets where lower- and middle-income families cannot afford to live.
Detroit; Oklahoma City; Toledo, Ohio; and Greensboro, N.C., experienced the biggest rises in income segregation in the decade, while 13 areas, including Atlanta, had declines. Philadelphia and its suburbs registered the sharpest rise since 1970.
“It was real nice,” he said, shuffling along Chelten Avenue on Monday. Theaters thrived on the avenue, he said, as did a fancy department store. Now a Walgreens stands in its place. “Everything started going down in the dumps,” he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The Germantown area of Philadelphia was formerly considered solidly middle class but is now mostly low income. "Everything started going down in the dumps," a longtime resident said.
The Obama Marxist regime’s plan has worked. Obama has not failed! Folks, Obama is evil and he has to be defeated. So stop your damned bickering and get to work! Obama and his media and union minions must be sent packing!
You deny millions of the middle class lost their jobs, careers, investments, businesses etc., all while their homes were seized by the banks, while the insiders and wealthy supported bailing about big biz and Wall Street to the tune of multiple trillions?
You deny this?
This is impossible. 48 percent of Americans pay no taxes! I guess those of us who do pay the taxes are considered Middle Class now.
Somehow the shrinking middle class isn’t a problem if only the wealthier were shrinking too, then it’d fine and dandy.
lol.
Of course if its rich leftists who are losing wealth, the NY Times would be calling for bailing them out.
This ‘income gap’ meme is bollocks.
Income equality is available today...in Cuba.
We should seek activity (rising tide etc.) not some artificially-induced parity.
I know it’s the NYT but enough is enough.
and what evil bailed them out? Government. But this newspaper LOVES government.
No it isn't....Fidel and Raul are two of the richest men in the world.
If you own a home, you pay big taxes...
No doubt that the middle class is under pressure, but...
I suspect that if your read through the data, you will see that this study is focused on what were formerly big city middle class neighborhoods, going back to 1970.
This is less about income inequality than it is about the decline of industrial cities and a migration of their working populations away and out to the ‘burbs. It is a function of the changes in the economy away from heavy manufacturing toward a service and information-based economy.
You deny this?
and what evil bailed them out? Government.
Agree, but the insiders running the fat corps, banks and Wall Street are all riding in the government limo.
No, it's not under pressure, it's being decimated.
Feel free to answer #5, as the other poster it was directed at, chose not to.
WELL WORTH REPEATING
Unlike some who spend their entire days here, I am at work, and cannot immediately answer you... I have done so...take your alinsky tactics elsewhere pal...
I regret that the irony of my post was not clear...the socialist utopia that OWS and others desire will always result in the kind of setup that exists in Cuba as well as old Iron Curtain nations.
OWS are, of course, terminally irony-free so they will never see the futility and hypocrisy of their objectives.
Hardly surprising since more Americans have decided to sell their souls to go on socialist government assistance rather than improve their skill set to increase their income. I’m rather tired of paying for it.
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