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

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…”