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University of Wisconsin–Madison
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty

Tag: Middle class

The Middle Class

The middle class is poorer today than it was in 1989, By Matt O’Brien, October 1, 2014, Washington Post: The fundamentals of the economy are, well, okay. It’s been slow and steady, but the recovery has chugged along enough to get us back to something close to normal. The economy has surpassed its pre-crisis peak, unemployment is at a six-year low, and stocks have more than tripled from their 2009 low. It’s not the best of times, but it’s certainly not the worst — which was a very real possibility after Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy threatened to send us into a second Great Depression…”

Middle-Class Income by County

Where the middle class is most unequal, By Tami Luhby, September 15, 2014, CNN Money: “Virginia is the most unequal when it comes to comparing median income by county. Loudoun, a wealthy county near Washington D.C., has four times the median income of Buchanan, a struggling county in the southwestern portion of the state. Home to Washington Dulles International Airport, Loudoun is one of the fastest growing counties in Virginia. Its population has surged 12% to nearly 350,000 between 2010 and 2013, compared to a 3% growth rate for the rest of the state…”

Household Wealth

The typical household, now worth a third less, By Anna Bernasek, July 27, 2014, New York Times: “Economic inequality in the United States has been receiving a lot of attention. But it’s not merely an issue of the rich getting richer. The typical American household has been getting poorer, too. The inflation-adjusted net worth for the typical household was $87,992 in 2003. Ten years later, it was only $56,335, or a 36 percent decline, according to a study financed by the Russell Sage Foundation. Those are the figures for a household at the median point in the wealth distribution — the level at which there are an equal number of households whose worth is higher and lower. But during the same period, the net worth of wealthy households increased substantially. The Russell Sage study also examined net worth. . .”