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I'm not quite understanding why the "Lower Class" trends seem to be so flat, while the middle income trends are down. Where are the middle income families going

by mikekij 10y ago

I'm not quite understanding why the "Lower Class" trends seem to be so flat, while the middle income trends are down. Where are the middle income families going if not the lower income bracket?

ronnier 10y ago
I believe what you are seeing is the white middle class dying off.
- tosseraccount 10y ago
  http://www.prb.org/publications/datasheets/2012/world-population-data-sheet/fact-sheet-us-population.aspx http://www.prb.org/publications/datasheets/2012/world-popula... White fertility is relatively stable; other demographics are declining faster.
knowaveragejoe 10y ago
Up? At least, that's what some of the graphs appear to show.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Up? At least, that's what some of the graphs appear to show. A very slight bias that way, national report shows; since 1971: Lowest tier: +4 percentage points (pp) Lower Middle: n/c Middle: -10 pp Upper Middle: n/c Highest tier: +5 pp (Difference is rounding errors.) (Incidentally, I really wish there were a way to do the equivalent of an HTML <br> tag in HN comments, without going to code mode.)
usefulcat 10y ago
If the lower class is significantly larger than the middle class in absolute terms, then the movement of a given number of people from middle to lower will have a relatively larger impact on the slope of the middle class line than on the lower class line.
quadrangle 10y ago
There are three sections to the article. You only looked at the first one.
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
One explanation is that for every "person" who leaves the middle class, one goes down a notch and two go up. I say "person" because these are aggregate measures so it's an abstraction of "person". Example: in energy, technicians move up the scale and perform less physical labor than comparable (if even possible) workers thirty years ago. The lower classes are hard up against relative diminishing returns on labor. A textile worker, say, still makes what they'd have made in the 1950s in absolute terms. This does not keep up with a general rising standard of living in the US but it works fine in PacRim countries - until it doesn't.

by mikekij 10y ago

I'm not quite understanding why the "Lower Class" trends seem to be so flat, while the middle income trends are down. Where are the middle income families going if not the lower income bracket?

ronnier 10y ago

I believe what you are seeing is the white middle class dying off.

tosseraccount 10y ago
http://www.prb.org/publications/datasheets/2012/world-population-data-sheet/fact-sheet-us-population.aspx http://www.prb.org/publications/datasheets/2012/world-popula... White fertility is relatively stable; other demographics are declining faster.

knowaveragejoe 10y ago

Up? At least, that's what some of the graphs appear to show.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> Up? At least, that's what some of the graphs appear to show. A very slight bias that way, national report shows; since 1971: Lowest tier: +4 percentage points (pp) Lower Middle: n/c Middle: -10 pp Upper Middle: n/c Highest tier: +5 pp (Difference is rounding errors.) (Incidentally, I really wish there were a way to do the equivalent of an HTML <br> tag in HN comments, without going to code mode.)

usefulcat 10y ago

If the lower class is significantly larger than the middle class in absolute terms, then the movement of a given number of people from middle to lower will have a relatively larger impact on the slope of the middle class line than on the lower class line.

quadrangle 10y ago

There are three sections to the article. You only looked at the first one.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago

One explanation is that for every "person" who leaves the middle class, one goes down a notch and two go up. I say "person" because these are aggregate measures so it's an abstraction of "person". Example: in energy, technicians move up the scale and perform less physical labor than comparable (if even possible) workers thirty years ago. The lower classes are hard up against relative diminishing returns on labor. A textile worker, say, still makes what they'd have made in the 1950s in absolute terms. This does not keep up with a general rising standard of living in the US but it works fine in PacRim countries - until it doesn't.