I watched the debate last night. It felt like a battle between the middle class and the upper class. Neither candidate mentioned the working class, defined as those without a bachelor’s degree. Have working people become the new working class?
I often wonder why policymakers focus on the middle class rather than low-income Americans, who are the most vulnerable in our society. While the voting habits of low-income Americans may be an explanation, how the middle class is defined is probably the motivation behind this strategy.
Defining the Middle Class
What it means to be middle class depends on who you ask. In an American Economic Institute of Research report, Steve Pressman summarizes how scholars have defined the middle class. He finds that the middle class has been defined using:
- Education: a household is upper class if anyone in the household completed a 4-year college degree;
- Income: a household is upper class based on inclusion in an income range or the position in the income distribution;
- Self-identification: ask individuals if they are middle class;
- Wealth: value of assets.
The Pew Center defines the middle class as:
Middle-income households are defined as those with incomes
two-thirds to double the U.S. median household income after
incomes have been adjusted for household size. Lower-
income households have incomes less than two-thirds
of the median, and upper-income households have incomes
more than double the median.
However, a Washington Post (WaPo) poll found that when asked, people did not explicitly mention income as a characteristic of being middle class (see Table 1).
Table 1. What it takes to be middle class
Source: Nov. 3-6, 2023, Washington Post poll of 1,280 U.S. adults with a +/- 3.7 percentage point margin of error. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/02/15/middle-class-financial-security/
I prefer the Pew definition, which is “objective.” But the Washington Post poll explains why so many Americans consider themselves to be part of the middle class, even though their income does not support this belief.
Great or Forward
Yesterday, the U. S. Census reports released reports on healthcare coverage, income, and poverty. Yet, neither candidate mentioned key findings from these reports.
For example, the percentage of multiracial people in poverty increased from 12.2 percent in 2022 to 14.4 percent in 2023, and the percentage of women in poverty decreased from 12.9 percent in 2022 to 11.9 percent in 2023. Given the decrease in the median earnings of women by 2 percent, $42,110 in 2023, down from $42,960 in 2022, the decrease in the percentage of women in poverty is noteworthy.
Additionally, for the first time in twenty years, the female-to-male median earnings ratio for full-time, year-round workers decreased, and it was significant. In 2022, women earned 84 cents for every dollar men earned. In 2023, this ratio was 82.7 cents.
If the earnings gap between men and women continues to increase, neither an “Opportunity Economy” nor “The Greatest Economy in History” will be achieved.
Thinking about the families of those killed on 9/11 and those who survived.
