8 ms·

The middle class is shrinking and in Chicago it’s almost gone

74 points by SQL2219 8y ago

sandworm101 8y ago
Is this not the goal? Everyone seems to want this. Reduced taxes for the rich. Deregulation. A better "business environment" due to "small government". The continuation of employer-provided healthcare. Stricter intelectual property laws. Ever single domestic policy choice of late seems determined to do this. Middle america should be happy. They keep voting for this stuff.
- jjoonathan 8y ago
  The fact that the system is routing around democratic processes to serve the interests of the wealthy is a feature, not a bug: the entire "objective function" that capitalism optimizes is weighted according to wealth.
- TDL 8y ago
  Chicago is anything but a "small government" city. Chicago (and Illinois) is very much a "big government" city, so I don't understand your criticism.
- grayed-down 8y ago
  I don't know where you hail from, but what you so snarkily describe is not happening...at all. Taxes in the US, at all levels, are going up as evidenced by the continual rise in tax revenue collected by virtually all levels of government. There has never been more regulations placed on businesses that deliver middle class wages. Trump may have rolled back a handful of redundant regs, but that's just a finger in the dike. Healthcare costs and costs of coverage continue to geometrically increase because of government interference. IIRC, employer-provided healthcare may even be diminishing in some fashion. Not sure. As for IP laws, I'm not sure how you're relating that to the collapse of the US/Western middle class, but I'm sure you have a reason to mention it.
  - jjoonathan 8y ago
    > Taxes in the US, at all levels, are going up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_gains_tax_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Top_Capital_Gains_Tax_Rates_and_Economic_Growth_1950-2011.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_gains_tax_in_the_Unite...
    - sonnyblarney 8y ago
      Your factoid, indicating that 'a specific threshold of cap gains tax' has gone down, does not negate the commenters point. Cap gains is only one kind of tax, moreover, the 'top rate' is just one factor in it. Overall - tax receipts as a % of GDP have roughly been steady [1] or going up a little bit. (Hint: tax rates going up or down don't mean that tax receipts go up or down in unison. Lower taxes could possibly mean more tax revenue etc.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauser%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauser%27s_law As for Chicago, there might be specific factors. My unscientific hunch is that the middle class moved out, the crappy neighbourhoods expanded, and some neighbourhoods were taken over by migrants from poorer countries who don't have access/qualifications for higher skilled jobs. Essentially the same story as many cities, without maybe the 2000's renaissance we've seen elsewhere with people coming back to the urban core. It would be nice to look at the entire Chicago region.
- jedmeyers 8y ago
  Chicago has been overwhelmingly governed by the Democrats, yet they things you've listed are usually pushed by the Republicans. And people leaving are usually going to the majority Republican states and cities. How can you explain this phenomenon?
  - StudentStuff 8y ago
    Far right Democrats enact these sorts of policies too, see Southern California as an example. They're usually huge bootlickers, bought and paid for by companies. Edit: Downvote away, but if you tune to local public radio in San Diego & LA, some "Democrat" will often be banging on about how the #1 job of theirs is to ensure law and order. Democrats in other states don't usually prattle on about law and order, but its a special breed down there.
  - enraged_camel 8y ago
    "Democrat" doesn't necessarily mean liberal. There are plenty of conservative Democrats, and plenty of the "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" types.
    - grayed-down 8y ago
      Those conservative democrats seem to be pretty well hidden these days :-)
  - muzz 8y ago
    Was that different before 1970?
  - ousta 8y ago
    easy. democrats do not want to live in states where the ideas they vote for are put into concrete projects. just look at california. they all going to texas to make it become like cali
    - samatman 8y ago
      This is a tiresome trope that needs to die. California is a formerly Red state, Texas is nearly blue. It's not that the situation is the opposite of what you describe, it's that your nostrums are utterly incoherent and describe nothing of any accuracy.
- CryptoPunk 8y ago
  The statistical evidence proves you are wrong. Chicago's political system is dominated by public sector unions. Social welfare spending across the US, including in Chicago, has massively increased since 1970. Meanwhile, on the regulatory front, the percentage of jobs requiring an occupational license increased from 5% in 1950, to about 25% today. Entire regulatory agencies were also created since 1970, including the EPA and OSHA. Any broad-based measure of how regulated the economy is, like the size of the Code of Federal Regulations, shows regulations increasing in scope since 1970.
- rdtsc 8y ago
  > Middle america should be happy. They keep voting for this stuff. I lived in "Middle America" and I wouldn't say Chicago is representative of "Middle America" in general? But I only visited Chicago so perhaps someone from there can chime in and correct me. > Deregulation. Chicago just doesn't seem like a great bastion of "Deregulation". It just seems like you are disproving your points here. Now if we are talking stereotypes, besides deep dish pizza, one thing I think of when I think Chicago is corrupt politicians. The local news stations seems to agree at least: https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2019/02/11/chicago-most-corrupt-city/ https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2019/02/11/chicago-most-corrupt...
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jseliger 8y ago
Chicago likely has harsh zoning laws that raise the cost of housing and also imposes steep taxes for not-great public services (https://www.illinoispolicy.org/study-illinois-home-to-highest-overall-tax-burden-in-the-nation/ https://www.illinoispolicy.org/study-illinois-home-to-highes...). Should it be any surprise that the middle class is moving to Phoenix, Austin, Dallas, Atlanta, and Florida? Perhaps we ought to lower the cost of living (https://www.econlib.org/yimby/ https://www.econlib.org/yimby/) in Chicago, along with other cities like New York and Boston.
- nostromo 8y ago
  I agree that’s likely true for New York and Boston (and San Francisco) but Chicago is actually fairly developer friendly and ok with density. I think Chicago’s taxation is the problem. The taxes are the highest in the nation and have scared off the middle class.
  - lotsofpulp 8y ago
    Not only are they the highest, they have to keep going up for the next few decades due to the structural debt of the city and the state.
    - dvtrn 8y ago
      due to the structural debt of the city and the state. That's a very soft way of saying "we have a super, mega, ridiculous pension crisis sucking the city dry"
  - tptacek 8y ago
    Which taxes are you referring to? Chicago's total tax burden, including property taxes, is lower than most East Coast cities, and the state is 8th, not 1st, in statewide tax burden. Doesn't NYC, for instance, have much higher taxes than Chicago?
grayed-down 8y ago
Chicago and C[r]ook county generally are corpses. They still look and smell alive, but in reality they are financially and spiritually dead. It's just that rigor mortis has not yet started to set in.
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ng12 8y ago
It's very obvious to me that the largest American cities are built for the very wealthy and the very poor. If you can afford to move out you can greatly increase your quality of life elsewhere.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  In the 1970's crime spike in many American cities, and the 'burbs' became a real aspiration. The middle class simply moved out. American cities have mostly 'business cores' anyhow, with big banking buildings, not like in Europe where they're pedestrian and have homes. In some cities, there's been a renaissance of urban living and people moving back in since the 2000's, but it depends on the city. My guess is that 80% of what's going on here is just that: demographic migration. What we need is greater Chicago data and probably statewide as well. I suspect you'll find the 'exaburbs' doing really well.
adamnemecek 8y ago
What's everyone's opinion of Andrew Yang?
losvedir 8y ago
Hmm, following the link to look at more charts of the underlying data I'm confused about how to interpret this. First, the definition of "middle class" they're using is literally average Chicago income, not fixed to some inflation adjusted amount or compared to the U. S. as a whole. I didn't see at a glance if that average income changed over the time. If the average income rose, but the distribution changed, that's not necessarily the middle class being "almost gone". Also, there's a lot on uncontrolled confounders here. Age is a big one. It mentions that half of census regions saw their average income decline by 20% but that of those regions the majority of people there are under 19 (!). So one interpretation of the data could be that the city as a whole got richer but a few small areas stopped having kids.
pmorici 8y ago
If the modern day poor are living an equivalent life style to the middle class from 50 years ago is that really a problem? That’s what part of this article seems to describe. Also would be interesting how much of this is attributable to the rise in prevalence of two income households. 2x a middle income would be considered wealthy by the measure used in this study
- ALittleLight 8y ago
  >If the modern day poor are living an equivalent life style to the middle class from 50 years ago is that really a problem? If the middle class have largely collapsed into the poor, and the poor now live as the middle class did - that implies that for the formerly middle class there has been no growth in fifty years.
- chipotle_coyote 8y ago
  I don't understand where you're asserting the article says that. The fact that neighborhoods whose per capita income was around the middle in 1970 are in the lower quintiles now does not mean that the 1970 middle class and the 2017 lower class have "equivalent lifestyles." It means the neighborhoods are poorer.
  - kasey_junk 8y ago
    They literally outline a house that has changed occupants (white/middle class to Latino/lower class) but the living/working situation was the same.
- llukas 8y ago
  You may have better car and TV than middle class from 50 years ago BUT if small emergency expense puts you in red you are not living middle class lifestyle.
- Haga 8y ago
  Remember to blame theire character, vices and genetics for a full retro aristocratic statement.
- 8y ago
danablast2 8y ago
They've transitioned into the Pension Class.
droithomme 8y ago
Moreso, high income and low income have both decreased as well. Instead there's been large gains in "very high" income, and "very low" income. Other categories have essentially evaporated.
jaabe 8y ago
How is the middle class in the US in general? This is completely anecdotal and based on random strangers on the internet, so it may be wrong, but Americans seem more careful with their money today than they did 15 years ago. I buy a lot of board games, and I’ve noticed how discussions on $100 kickstarters have started being about how it could break someone’s budget. I’m personally part of the Scandinavian middle class, and a hall mark of that, is that you can spend $100 on something silly and not worry about it. It’s extremely poor data of course, but it’s something I just never saw 15 years ago.
- jjtheblunt 8y ago
  The article's title = "The Middle Class Is Shrinking Everywhere — In Chicago It’s Almost Gone"
- mongol 8y ago
  Scandinavian middle class is not quite so uniform. Norweigian is considerably more wealthy than Swedish. I would guess Danish inbetween though closer to Swedish. I actually guess you are Norweigian!
  - jaabe 8y ago
    Norwegians are in a league of their own, that’s true, though it’s more their society that had money and not private citizens as such. They generally also have rather high prices on everything. I’m Danish though.
- Todd 8y ago
  The article says: In 1970, 61 percent of Americans belonged to the middle class, said Kochhar, “a clear majority.” Using Pew’s methodology, that figure now hovers around 50 percent nationally.
- stunt 8y ago
  Indeed there are increasing number of warnings, articles, and studies saying that middle-class is shrinking. And it is obviously very hard to understand it if you are not part of it yourself. Probably much harder to find anyone agreeing with that if you post it to a tech/engineering focused community. But we should not ignore these warnings.
mvyo 8y ago
> A city census tract was considered “middle income” if its average per capita income fell between 80 and 120 percent of the metro-wide average for that year The "middle class" term should be replaced in our language with something more concrete. It's not even a class after all. It's just an arbitrary label that doesn't have any useful meaning.
rjf72 8y ago
There is one very key issue here that is often overlooked. Here are two datums. The first [1] is Chicago community areas by per capita income. The second [2] is the same areas by fertility rate. There is an extremely strong correlation between these two datums. This holds everywhere from our world at large, to individual countries, to even community areas within an arbitrary city in the US. The areas with the lowest fertility rate is "Loop" with a fertility rate of 24.3 and a per capita income of $65,526. The area with the highest fertility rate is South Lawndale with a fertility rate of 99.6, more than 400% that of Loop. And they have a per capita income of $10,402. While there may be some exceptions, they are indeed the exception. This holds true everywhere. These [3] are data for the US as a whole contrasting fertility vs income. Once again those earning less than $10,000 have a fertility rate more than 20 points higher (150%) the rate of those earning $200k+ per year. And there is a disconcertingly smooth gradient in between. As an aside there are also strong links between fertility and low education and high religiosity as well as low income. Think about what this means for each generation of children. An ever larger portion of children end up coming from these families with low income, low education, and high religiosity. And now this even larger portion of society will go on to spread their genes in a comparable way meaning you'll see an even higher chunk of children from the next generation coming from these groups. Poverty gets turned into a virus. Bringing people out of poverty might be a solution if not for the fact that then when people emerge from poverty, they stop having as many children. And another issue here is that fertility rate understates the issue! When one group has the same number of children but has them younger, this has a direct effect on 'real' fertility rates. Imagine there are two groups with an identical fertility rate. However, one has children at 15 years of age on average, and another on 30 (using these numbers only for convenient math). By the time the 30 group has had their child the 15 group has had a child, and that child is now also having a child! You have the exact same fertility rate on paper, but in terms of population impact the young group has a 100% greater fertility rate. Ultimately people who can in no way expect to be able to provide even a half decent upbringing for children need to stop having so many children. At the same time people who actually can afford to help provide a great life for a new generation need to stop being so self centered and do just that. Until that happens what do people expect to see? You're going to see poverty spreading rapidly even if it was holding completely level simply because you'll see more new people in poor families. Keep in mind the twisted nature of exponential growth. If you have a population of 10,000,000,000 with a fertility rate of 2 and then a population of 10 with a fertility rate of 4, that population of 10 will become the majority and in the longrun approach becoming 100% of the population. You cannot overstate the relevance of fertility rates if you at all care about socioeconomic issues. [1] - https://data.cityofchicago.org/Health-Human-Services/Census-Data-Selected-socioeconomic-indicators-in-C/kn9c-c2s2/data https://data.cityofchicago.org/Health-Human-Services/Census-... [2] - https://data.cityofchicago.org/Health-Human-Services/Public-Health-Statistics-General-fertility-rates-i/g5zk-9ycw/data https://data.cityofchicago.org/Health-Human-Services/Public-... [3] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...
thor666 8y ago
Not only Chibongo, but the entire United States is going to be the capital of the third world, with Kamala Harris and Alexandria Of-Color at the helm.
tptacek 8y ago
We should be careful with maps like this of Chicago, since the time period we're talking about (1970-) coincides with the phasing out of redlining, which kept black families out of white stronghold neighborhoods. It could just be that what you're looking at is the gentrification of the north side and "white flight" into the suburbs. Also, the numbers for this map don't sync up with the "rich blocks, poor blocks" census maps of Chicago. For instance, these maps appear to show Portage Park and Jefferson Park as low-income neighborhoods; that's not what the 2010 census map shows (substantially above the state median!), nor what anyone would expect if they were familiar with those neighborhoods, which are both middle class enclaves. In the 2010 census maps, as soon as Austin gives way to Belmont-Cragin, we're back into middle class neighborhoods on the west side. This map also has Mt. Greenwood as a poor neighborhood. Unless we suddenly stopped paying cops and firefighters, that seems pretty unlikely. Someone else familiar with the city got an idea of what's going on here?
- bsanr 8y ago
  My understanding (however much it is relevant) is that Chicago is still one of the most segregated large cities in the country. So, the end of redlining/contract housing/etc. did not mean the end of segregation and its effects.
- kasey_junk 8y ago
  The linked blog post is better. Reading through the methodology it seems this is just white flight. At least without representing the full regional map that would be the easiest conclusion.
  - tptacek 8y ago
    They also don't mention the closing of the US Steel plants in this article, even though for the time frame they're discussing it was probably the single most important event for the south side middle class.
thor667 8y ago
Not only Chibongo, but the entire United States will become the capital of the third world. Thanks to you, neckbeard beta orbiters and your representatives: Alexandria Of-Color and Kamala Harris.
forrestthewoods 8y ago
> For UIC to consider a census tract middle income, the average per capita income there had to fall between $28,712 and $43,068. What a hilariously narrow definition of “middle class”. That’s roughly $14.35 to $21.53 per hour. This entire analysis is a waste of time. Is the underlying data available? I’d love to take a crack at producing some better visualizations.
- rjf72 8y ago
  I suspect they were using the data from here [1]. Quite well organized and easy to play with, even has numeric indexing of the various areas so you can mix and match the data easily! [1] - https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/cdph/provdrs/health_data_and_reports/svcs/office_of_epidemiologydataanalysisrequests.html https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/cdph/provdrs/health_da...
thoruser1 8y ago
Not only Chibongo, but the entire United States will become the capital of the third world. Thanks to you, neckbeard beta orbiters and your representatives: Alexandria Of-Color and Kamala Harris.
- dclowd9901 8y ago
  I can't begin to unravel what you're trying to get at, but the problem of a shrinking middle class is one of abject capitalism with no oversight, coupled with consumer credit availability and no proper social safety nets vis-a-vis single payer healthcare and free college. These are all well-documented cornerstones of countries with a thriving middle class (America, included).
  - thoruser1 8y ago
    I think your virtue signaling (or True Belief) is better suited for Google internal employee network. If you aren't a Goolag employee yet, consider applying there.
acchow 8y ago
In San Francisco, you actually have the new housing developments pay for the construction of Below Market Rate units. This makes new housing even more expensive and effectively prices out the middle class. The lower class can buy BMR units tho.
akulbe 8y ago
I know the original article provides some data in terms of what the "classes" are. It would be nice to have some DEFINITIVE numbers that says what the class ranges are. It seems like a moving target, and subject to wide interpretation. What salary ranges constitute poverty? middle class? upper-middle class? upper class? insane 1%? Is there even anything definitive to point to for these numbers?
manigandham 8y ago
Just did taxes. Middle class and bill went up significantly due to completely destroyed deductions limit. Meanwhile people I know who make far less are getting great refunds and my rich friends don't notice anything different personally but their businesses are all saving money.

74 points by SQL2219 8y ago

Is this not the goal? Everyone seems to want this. Reduced taxes for the rich. Deregulation. A better "business environment" due to "small government". The continuation of employer-provided healthcare. Stricter intelectual property laws. Ever single domestic policy choice of late seems determined to do this. Middle america should be happy. They keep voting for this stuff.

jjoonathan 8y ago
The fact that the system is routing around democratic processes to serve the interests of the wealthy is a feature, not a bug: the entire "objective function" that capitalism optimizes is weighted according to wealth.
TDL 8y ago
Chicago is anything but a "small government" city. Chicago (and Illinois) is very much a "big government" city, so I don't understand your criticism.
grayed-down 8y ago
I don't know where you hail from, but what you so snarkily describe is not happening...at all. Taxes in the US, at all levels, are going up as evidenced by the continual rise in tax revenue collected by virtually all levels of government. There has never been more regulations placed on businesses that deliver middle class wages. Trump may have rolled back a handful of redundant regs, but that's just a finger in the dike. Healthcare costs and costs of coverage continue to geometrically increase because of government interference. IIRC, employer-provided healthcare may even be diminishing in some fashion. Not sure. As for IP laws, I'm not sure how you're relating that to the collapse of the US/Western middle class, but I'm sure you have a reason to mention it.
- jjoonathan 8y ago
  > Taxes in the US, at all levels, are going up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_gains_tax_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Top_Capital_Gains_Tax_Rates_and_Economic_Growth_1950-2011.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_gains_tax_in_the_Unite...
  - sonnyblarney 8y ago
    Your factoid, indicating that 'a specific threshold of cap gains tax' has gone down, does not negate the commenters point. Cap gains is only one kind of tax, moreover, the 'top rate' is just one factor in it. Overall - tax receipts as a % of GDP have roughly been steady [1] or going up a little bit. (Hint: tax rates going up or down don't mean that tax receipts go up or down in unison. Lower taxes could possibly mean more tax revenue etc.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauser%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauser%27s_law As for Chicago, there might be specific factors. My unscientific hunch is that the middle class moved out, the crappy neighbourhoods expanded, and some neighbourhoods were taken over by migrants from poorer countries who don't have access/qualifications for higher skilled jobs. Essentially the same story as many cities, without maybe the 2000's renaissance we've seen elsewhere with people coming back to the urban core. It would be nice to look at the entire Chicago region.
jedmeyers 8y ago
Chicago has been overwhelmingly governed by the Democrats, yet they things you've listed are usually pushed by the Republicans. And people leaving are usually going to the majority Republican states and cities. How can you explain this phenomenon?
- StudentStuff 8y ago
  Far right Democrats enact these sorts of policies too, see Southern California as an example. They're usually huge bootlickers, bought and paid for by companies. Edit: Downvote away, but if you tune to local public radio in San Diego & LA, some "Democrat" will often be banging on about how the #1 job of theirs is to ensure law and order. Democrats in other states don't usually prattle on about law and order, but its a special breed down there.
- enraged_camel 8y ago
  "Democrat" doesn't necessarily mean liberal. There are plenty of conservative Democrats, and plenty of the "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" types.
  - grayed-down 8y ago
    Those conservative democrats seem to be pretty well hidden these days :-)
- muzz 8y ago
  Was that different before 1970?
- ousta 8y ago
  easy. democrats do not want to live in states where the ideas they vote for are put into concrete projects. just look at california. they all going to texas to make it become like cali
  - samatman 8y ago
    This is a tiresome trope that needs to die. California is a formerly Red state, Texas is nearly blue. It's not that the situation is the opposite of what you describe, it's that your nostrums are utterly incoherent and describe nothing of any accuracy.
CryptoPunk 8y ago
The statistical evidence proves you are wrong. Chicago's political system is dominated by public sector unions. Social welfare spending across the US, including in Chicago, has massively increased since 1970. Meanwhile, on the regulatory front, the percentage of jobs requiring an occupational license increased from 5% in 1950, to about 25% today. Entire regulatory agencies were also created since 1970, including the EPA and OSHA. Any broad-based measure of how regulated the economy is, like the size of the Code of Federal Regulations, shows regulations increasing in scope since 1970.
rdtsc 8y ago
> Middle america should be happy. They keep voting for this stuff. I lived in "Middle America" and I wouldn't say Chicago is representative of "Middle America" in general? But I only visited Chicago so perhaps someone from there can chime in and correct me. > Deregulation. Chicago just doesn't seem like a great bastion of "Deregulation". It just seems like you are disproving your points here. Now if we are talking stereotypes, besides deep dish pizza, one thing I think of when I think Chicago is corrupt politicians. The local news stations seems to agree at least: https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2019/02/11/chicago-most-corrupt-city/ https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2019/02/11/chicago-most-corrupt...

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jseliger 8y ago

Chicago likely has harsh zoning laws that raise the cost of housing and also imposes steep taxes for not-great public services (https://www.illinoispolicy.org/study-illinois-home-to-highest-overall-tax-burden-in-the-nation/ https://www.illinoispolicy.org/study-illinois-home-to-highes...). Should it be any surprise that the middle class is moving to Phoenix, Austin, Dallas, Atlanta, and Florida? Perhaps we ought to lower the cost of living (https://www.econlib.org/yimby/ https://www.econlib.org/yimby/) in Chicago, along with other cities like New York and Boston.

nostromo 8y ago
I agree that’s likely true for New York and Boston (and San Francisco) but Chicago is actually fairly developer friendly and ok with density. I think Chicago’s taxation is the problem. The taxes are the highest in the nation and have scared off the middle class.
- lotsofpulp 8y ago
  Not only are they the highest, they have to keep going up for the next few decades due to the structural debt of the city and the state.
  - dvtrn 8y ago
    due to the structural debt of the city and the state. That's a very soft way of saying "we have a super, mega, ridiculous pension crisis sucking the city dry"
- tptacek 8y ago
  Which taxes are you referring to? Chicago's total tax burden, including property taxes, is lower than most East Coast cities, and the state is 8th, not 1st, in statewide tax burden. Doesn't NYC, for instance, have much higher taxes than Chicago?

grayed-down 8y ago

Chicago and C[r]ook county generally are corpses. They still look and smell alive, but in reality they are financially and spiritually dead. It's just that rigor mortis has not yet started to set in.

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ng12 8y ago

It's very obvious to me that the largest American cities are built for the very wealthy and the very poor. If you can afford to move out you can greatly increase your quality of life elsewhere.

sonnyblarney 8y ago
In the 1970's crime spike in many American cities, and the 'burbs' became a real aspiration. The middle class simply moved out. American cities have mostly 'business cores' anyhow, with big banking buildings, not like in Europe where they're pedestrian and have homes. In some cities, there's been a renaissance of urban living and people moving back in since the 2000's, but it depends on the city. My guess is that 80% of what's going on here is just that: demographic migration. What we need is greater Chicago data and probably statewide as well. I suspect you'll find the 'exaburbs' doing really well.

adamnemecek 8y ago

What's everyone's opinion of Andrew Yang?

losvedir 8y ago

Hmm, following the link to look at more charts of the underlying data I'm confused about how to interpret this. First, the definition of "middle class" they're using is literally average Chicago income, not fixed to some inflation adjusted amount or compared to the U. S. as a whole. I didn't see at a glance if that average income changed over the time. If the average income rose, but the distribution changed, that's not necessarily the middle class being "almost gone". Also, there's a lot on uncontrolled confounders here. Age is a big one. It mentions that half of census regions saw their average income decline by 20% but that of those regions the majority of people there are under 19 (!). So one interpretation of the data could be that the city as a whole got richer but a few small areas stopped having kids.

pmorici 8y ago

If the modern day poor are living an equivalent life style to the middle class from 50 years ago is that really a problem? That’s what part of this article seems to describe. Also would be interesting how much of this is attributable to the rise in prevalence of two income households. 2x a middle income would be considered wealthy by the measure used in this study

ALittleLight 8y ago
>If the modern day poor are living an equivalent life style to the middle class from 50 years ago is that really a problem? If the middle class have largely collapsed into the poor, and the poor now live as the middle class did - that implies that for the formerly middle class there has been no growth in fifty years.
chipotle_coyote 8y ago
I don't understand where you're asserting the article says that. The fact that neighborhoods whose per capita income was around the middle in 1970 are in the lower quintiles now does not mean that the 1970 middle class and the 2017 lower class have "equivalent lifestyles." It means the neighborhoods are poorer.
- kasey_junk 8y ago
  They literally outline a house that has changed occupants (white/middle class to Latino/lower class) but the living/working situation was the same.
llukas 8y ago
You may have better car and TV than middle class from 50 years ago BUT if small emergency expense puts you in red you are not living middle class lifestyle.
Haga 8y ago
Remember to blame theire character, vices and genetics for a full retro aristocratic statement.
8y ago

danablast2 8y ago

They've transitioned into the Pension Class.

droithomme 8y ago

Moreso, high income and low income have both decreased as well. Instead there's been large gains in "very high" income, and "very low" income. Other categories have essentially evaporated.

jaabe 8y ago

How is the middle class in the US in general? This is completely anecdotal and based on random strangers on the internet, so it may be wrong, but Americans seem more careful with their money today than they did 15 years ago. I buy a lot of board games, and I’ve noticed how discussions on $100 kickstarters have started being about how it could break someone’s budget. I’m personally part of the Scandinavian middle class, and a hall mark of that, is that you can spend $100 on something silly and not worry about it. It’s extremely poor data of course, but it’s something I just never saw 15 years ago.

jjtheblunt 8y ago
The article's title = "The Middle Class Is Shrinking Everywhere — In Chicago It’s Almost Gone"
mongol 8y ago
Scandinavian middle class is not quite so uniform. Norweigian is considerably more wealthy than Swedish. I would guess Danish inbetween though closer to Swedish. I actually guess you are Norweigian!
- jaabe 8y ago
  Norwegians are in a league of their own, that’s true, though it’s more their society that had money and not private citizens as such. They generally also have rather high prices on everything. I’m Danish though.
Todd 8y ago
The article says: In 1970, 61 percent of Americans belonged to the middle class, said Kochhar, “a clear majority.” Using Pew’s methodology, that figure now hovers around 50 percent nationally.
stunt 8y ago
Indeed there are increasing number of warnings, articles, and studies saying that middle-class is shrinking. And it is obviously very hard to understand it if you are not part of it yourself. Probably much harder to find anyone agreeing with that if you post it to a tech/engineering focused community. But we should not ignore these warnings.

mvyo 8y ago

> A city census tract was considered “middle income” if its average per capita income fell between 80 and 120 percent of the metro-wide average for that year The "middle class" term should be replaced in our language with something more concrete. It's not even a class after all. It's just an arbitrary label that doesn't have any useful meaning.

rjf72 8y ago

There is one very key issue here that is often overlooked. Here are two datums. The first [1] is Chicago community areas by per capita income. The second [2] is the same areas by fertility rate. There is an extremely strong correlation between these two datums. This holds everywhere from our world at large, to individual countries, to even community areas within an arbitrary city in the US. The areas with the lowest fertility rate is "Loop" with a fertility rate of 24.3 and a per capita income of $65,526. The area with the highest fertility rate is South Lawndale with a fertility rate of 99.6, more than 400% that of Loop. And they have a per capita income of $10,402. While there may be some exceptions, they are indeed the exception. This holds true everywhere. These [3] are data for the US as a whole contrasting fertility vs income. Once again those earning less than $10,000 have a fertility rate more than 20 points higher (150%) the rate of those earning $200k+ per year. And there is a disconcertingly smooth gradient in between. As an aside there are also strong links between fertility and low education and high religiosity as well as low income. Think about what this means for each generation of children. An ever larger portion of children end up coming from these families with low income, low education, and high religiosity. And now this even larger portion of society will go on to spread their genes in a comparable way meaning you'll see an even higher chunk of children from the next generation coming from these groups. Poverty gets turned into a virus. Bringing people out of poverty might be a solution if not for the fact that then when people emerge from poverty, they stop having as many children. And another issue here is that fertility rate understates the issue! When one group has the same number of children but has them younger, this has a direct effect on 'real' fertility rates. Imagine there are two groups with an identical fertility rate. However, one has children at 15 years of age on average, and another on 30 (using these numbers only for convenient math). By the time the 30 group has had their child the 15 group has had a child, and that child is now also having a child! You have the exact same fertility rate on paper, but in terms of population impact the young group has a 100% greater fertility rate. Ultimately people who can in no way expect to be able to provide even a half decent upbringing for children need to stop having so many children. At the same time people who actually can afford to help provide a great life for a new generation need to stop being so self centered and do just that. Until that happens what do people expect to see? You're going to see poverty spreading rapidly even if it was holding completely level simply because you'll see more new people in poor families. Keep in mind the twisted nature of exponential growth. If you have a population of 10,000,000,000 with a fertility rate of 2 and then a population of 10 with a fertility rate of 4, that population of 10 will become the majority and in the longrun approach becoming 100% of the population. You cannot overstate the relevance of fertility rates if you at all care about socioeconomic issues. [1] - https://data.cityofchicago.org/Health-Human-Services/Census-Data-Selected-socioeconomic-indicators-in-C/kn9c-c2s2/data https://data.cityofchicago.org/Health-Human-Services/Census-... [2] - https://data.cityofchicago.org/Health-Human-Services/Public-Health-Statistics-General-fertility-rates-i/g5zk-9ycw/data https://data.cityofchicago.org/Health-Human-Services/Public-... [3] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...

thor666 8y ago

Not only Chibongo, but the entire United States is going to be the capital of the third world, with Kamala Harris and Alexandria Of-Color at the helm.

tptacek 8y ago

We should be careful with maps like this of Chicago, since the time period we're talking about (1970-) coincides with the phasing out of redlining, which kept black families out of white stronghold neighborhoods. It could just be that what you're looking at is the gentrification of the north side and "white flight" into the suburbs. Also, the numbers for this map don't sync up with the "rich blocks, poor blocks" census maps of Chicago. For instance, these maps appear to show Portage Park and Jefferson Park as low-income neighborhoods; that's not what the 2010 census map shows (substantially above the state median!), nor what anyone would expect if they were familiar with those neighborhoods, which are both middle class enclaves. In the 2010 census maps, as soon as Austin gives way to Belmont-Cragin, we're back into middle class neighborhoods on the west side. This map also has Mt. Greenwood as a poor neighborhood. Unless we suddenly stopped paying cops and firefighters, that seems pretty unlikely. Someone else familiar with the city got an idea of what's going on here?

bsanr 8y ago
My understanding (however much it is relevant) is that Chicago is still one of the most segregated large cities in the country. So, the end of redlining/contract housing/etc. did not mean the end of segregation and its effects.
kasey_junk 8y ago
The linked blog post is better. Reading through the methodology it seems this is just white flight. At least without representing the full regional map that would be the easiest conclusion.
- tptacek 8y ago
  They also don't mention the closing of the US Steel plants in this article, even though for the time frame they're discussing it was probably the single most important event for the south side middle class.

thor667 8y ago

Not only Chibongo, but the entire United States will become the capital of the third world. Thanks to you, neckbeard beta orbiters and your representatives: Alexandria Of-Color and Kamala Harris.

forrestthewoods 8y ago

> For UIC to consider a census tract middle income, the average per capita income there had to fall between $28,712 and $43,068. What a hilariously narrow definition of “middle class”. That’s roughly $14.35 to $21.53 per hour. This entire analysis is a waste of time. Is the underlying data available? I’d love to take a crack at producing some better visualizations.

rjf72 8y ago
I suspect they were using the data from here [1]. Quite well organized and easy to play with, even has numeric indexing of the various areas so you can mix and match the data easily! [1] - https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/cdph/provdrs/health_data_and_reports/svcs/office_of_epidemiologydataanalysisrequests.html https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/cdph/provdrs/health_da...

thoruser1 8y ago

Not only Chibongo, but the entire United States will become the capital of the third world. Thanks to you, neckbeard beta orbiters and your representatives: Alexandria Of-Color and Kamala Harris.

dclowd9901 8y ago
I can't begin to unravel what you're trying to get at, but the problem of a shrinking middle class is one of abject capitalism with no oversight, coupled with consumer credit availability and no proper social safety nets vis-a-vis single payer healthcare and free college. These are all well-documented cornerstones of countries with a thriving middle class (America, included).
- thoruser1 8y ago
  I think your virtue signaling (or True Belief) is better suited for Google internal employee network. If you aren't a Goolag employee yet, consider applying there.

acchow 8y ago

In San Francisco, you actually have the new housing developments pay for the construction of Below Market Rate units. This makes new housing even more expensive and effectively prices out the middle class. The lower class can buy BMR units tho.

akulbe 8y ago

I know the original article provides some data in terms of what the "classes" are. It would be nice to have some DEFINITIVE numbers that says what the class ranges are. It seems like a moving target, and subject to wide interpretation. What salary ranges constitute poverty? middle class? upper-middle class? upper class? insane 1%? Is there even anything definitive to point to for these numbers?

manigandham 8y ago

Just did taxes. Middle class and bill went up significantly due to completely destroyed deductions limit. Meanwhile people I know who make far less are getting great refunds and my rich friends don't notice anything different personally but their businesses are all saving money.