Unlike the demise of Mark Twain, rumors of the death of the middle class have not been exaggerated. (Photo Credit: CC BY/DonkeyHotey/Flickr)
According to a recent study by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the American middle class is one-third of the way to the grave. Witness this somber evidence of downward mobility: Nearly one in three Americans who grew up in middle-class families has slipped down the income ladder.
The slippery slope to economic disparity
The Pew study, which focuses on people who were teenagers in 1979 and between 39 and 44 years of age between 2004 and 2006, notes that middle-class individuals who experienced downward mobility are most commonly divorced and separated from their spouses. They most likely have not attended college, do not perform well on standardized tests and have used hard drugs.
The model used to define middle class is people between the 30th and 70th percentiles of income distribution. In 2010 dollars for a family of four, that’s between $32,900 and $64,000 in annual household income.
Only the rich getting richer
The income disparity becomes obvious when annual salary data is compared. IRS data for 2008 suggests that the average individual income in the U.S. was $33,000, a figure that has remained relatively stagnant for a while. For the richest 1 percent of Americans, however – those who make $380,000 or more annually – income has grown by 33 percent over the past 20 years.
Just as there are no guarantees that middle class salaries will increase any time soon, the Pew study findings suggest there’s no guarantee that the middle class will continue to be able to tread water.
“A middle-class upbringing does not guarantee the same status over the course of a lifetime,” the report says.
Trends by gender and race
The most dramatic indicators of being able to weather the pull of downward mobility were found among married, college-educated Caucasian women. Chances of retaining economic status were more likely for Caucasian women and men with education and marital status secured, but to a lesser extent with men.
Data in the Pew study for African-American men as a whole was most discouraging. Thirty-eight percent of black males who grew up in middle-class households become downwardly mobile, double the rate of all Caucasian males. According to Pew, the trend toward downward mobility for all Hispanic males is greater than that of white men, but the difference is not statistically significant. Among African-Americans and Hispanics, men are more likely to move downward than women. Caucasian men, when education and marital status are not taken into account, are less likely to experience downward mobility than Caucasian women.
Fighting against downward mobility
Sources
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