{"id":1527,"date":"2008-06-20T04:57:47","date_gmt":"2008-06-20T09:57:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=1527"},"modified":"2012-02-20T17:11:19","modified_gmt":"2012-02-20T22:11:19","slug":"subjective-perceptions-of-economic-well-being","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2008\/06\/20\/subjective-perceptions-of-economic-well-being\/","title":{"rendered":"Subjective Perceptions of Economic Well-Being"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jay Livingston over at <a href=\"http:\/\/montclairsoci.blogspot.com\/2008\/04\/better-off.html\" target=\"_blank\">Montclair Socioblog<\/a> reports on a report by the Pew Center. First this image:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2008\/06\/class-are-you-better-off-now-than-you-were-five-years-ago.gif\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1526 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2008\/06\/class-are-you-better-off-now-than-you-were-five-years-ago.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"394\" height=\"419\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Jay writes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When Reagan asked this question in the 1980 presidential debates, most people, according to Gallup felt that yes, they were better off \u2013 52% vs. 25% who felt they were worse off. That\u2019s puzzling, considering the apparent success of Reagan\u2019s question \u2013 he won the election handily.<\/p>\n<p>The interesting result from the Gallup numbers is that when Reagan left office \u2013 after the \u201cReagan recovery\u201d cherished by anti-tax, anti-regulation conservatives \u2013 the numbers were identical. If you look at actual changes in median family income, you see a slight decline in the Carter years and an increase in the Reagan years. But these changes aren\u2019t reflected in how people felt, at least not as measured by Gallup.<\/p>\n<p>This year\u2019s numbers show optimism at its lowest ebb since Gallup started asking the question in 1964. \u201cBetter off\u201d still tops \u201cworse off,\u201d but by only 41% to 31%. Even more surprising to me was the proportion of these self-identified middle-class Americans who rate their quality of life as low (five or less on a ten-point scale).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1529\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2008\/06\/class-how-do-you-rate-your-present-quality-of-life.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"267\" height=\"703\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jay Livingston over at Montclair Socioblog reports on a report by the Pew Center. First this image: Jay writes: When Reagan asked this question in the 1980 presidential debates, most people, according to Gallup felt that yes, they were better off \u2013 52% vs. 25% who felt they were worse off. That\u2019s puzzling, considering the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[349,29,36,12498,34,55,2105,253,272,693,285,1760,1754,1757],"class_list":["post-1527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ageaging","tag-class","tag-economics","tag-economics-great-recession","tag-education","tag-gender","tag-gender-economics","tag-history","tag-marriagefamily","tag-public-opinion","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-blacksafricans","tag-raceethnicity-latinos","tag-raceethnicity-whiteseuropeans"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1527"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45173,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1527\/revisions\/45173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}