Live Science reported yesterday on the endangered middle class during this time of economic crisis and promises from the presidential candidates do address those struggling on ‘Main Street.’ Live Science frames this problem in the following way: “Already, real income (which adjusts for inflation) has been stagnant since the 1970s, straining middle-class budgets and pushing wealth and power into the hands of the very few. Now some economists and sociologists fear the current crisis could make it all even more inequitable, putting the American Dream, the inspirational foundation of the middle class, at risk.” 

A sociologist weighs in on the elements of the American Dream under the most serious strain…

“The major reason I think the middle class is threatened is because most of the things we describe as revolving around the American Dream — owning a house in a good neighborhood and sending your children to good schools, owning and paying for a car or two, and saving money for retirement — all of that depends on having steady jobs with incomes that rise,” said Kevin Leicht, a sociologist at the University of Iowa. “People are supposed to accumulate … a lot of debt when they’re young and gradually pay it off as they age, and go less and less into debt.”

Another sociologist contributes…

The current middle-class concept, which is linked with “middle income” and the associated comfortable lifestyle, came into popular usage after World War II for various reasons, including an increase in education, prosperity and white-collar jobs, said sociologist Teresa Sullivan, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at the University of Michigan. With the ballooning middle-class, the so-called working class of blue-collar workers shrank. “For the most part, [the middle class] has grown pretty substantially in terms of the number of people who have moved into what might be called the middle of the income distribution,” Sullivan said, referring to the post World War II period.

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