James P. Brochin
Is the middle class shrinking? What are the consequences if it is? Is there any way to reverse, slow, or stop it? I will use economics to understand a social problem, by trying to make sense of the facts. I will discuss and define the middle class, by tracking median income over time, using Amartya Sen’s work on capabilities, the cost of college, healthcare, and looking at income and happiness, prospects for success, optimism, and life expectancies. I will use the resources of The Pew Research Center on the subject of income inequality and related topics, along with a number of other sources which will have students address some or most of the following questions: 1) How is being middle class defined? 2) How does the definition go beyond a minimum dollar figure? 3) Is being middle class a state of mind as much as a dollar-figure? 4) By state of mind, does it mean that the middle class had measurably fewer money problems that create daily and destructive stresses for the adults and the children? 5) Is a college degree necessary in order to enter or remain in the middle class? 6) How has the mass media, social media and smart phones led to lowered expectations and lowered prospects for Americans and contributed to growing skepticism about the American Dream?
These and other questions may at the same time be overlapping and too much to take on in a two-week unit. One way to narrow the focus might be for students in the journalism class to create surveys and interview fellow students about these matters. I would like have them do guided reading/research to discover the “fundamentals” of the data on the subject, brainstorm a simple but powerful survey, and gather survey data along with more a more general treatment using a “feature story” approach with interviews (beyond the scope of the survey) and photographs. The final product could be a series of articles, to be published in our school newspaper,
The Proclamation,
for which I am the faculty advisor.
Some facts about basic data about middle class Americans may impress students.
According to a December 2015 Pew Research Center article entitled “Five Takeaways About the American Middle Class”: 1) “Middle Income Americans are no longer the nation’s economic majority.” 2) “The
share
of U.S. aggregate household income earned by middle-income households has plunged, from 62% in 1970 to 43% in 2014. Meanwhile, the share earned by upper-income households increased from 29% to 49%. This shift is driven both by the growing size of the upper-income tier and more rapid gains in income at the top.” Neither of these findings addresses the related issue of the effect on Americans’ confidence in the future, daily exhaustion from the constant struggle to keep their heads above water, and the acute stresses of navigating the “getting into college and affording to go” carousel for the adults and “soon to be high school graduate.”
According to an article in CNN Money, titled “Who is Middle Class Anyway?” the question can be answered using five categories of data: income, wealth, consumption, aspiration, and demographics. The article is perfectly pitched to high school students, and helps provide data for surveys and articles. Graphics in that CNN article are large and very clear.