{"id":62244,"date":"2014-04-03T09:00:18","date_gmt":"2014-04-03T14:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=62244"},"modified":"2014-06-09T00:25:59","modified_gmt":"2014-06-09T05:25:59","slug":"chicagos-disappearing-middle-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2014\/04\/03\/chicagos-disappearing-middle-class\/","title":{"rendered":"Chicago’s Disappearing Middle Class"},"content":{"rendered":"

By now most readers<\/a> are likely familiar with the idea that the American middle class is shrinking<\/a>. \u00a0Most income and wealth gains over the past 40 or so years have gone to the richest Americans, while poverty is spreading and getting deeper. \u00a0As a result, the percent of Americans who can reasonably claim<\/a> to be middle class is shrinking.<\/p>\n

I found a fantastic animation illustrating this process in the neighborhoods of the city of Chicago. \u00a0Borrowing data from education scholar\u00a0S<\/a>ean Reardon<\/a>\u00a0and sociologist\u00a0Kendra Bischoff<\/a>, Daniel Hertz calculated where the \u00a0median family income of each Census tract fell relative to the entire metropolitan area. \u00a0Orange tracts are ones where the median family income is 0-45% of the median for Chicago as a whole (struggling families), dark green tracts are ones where the median is 200% or more (resource rich families). \u00a0Grey is, literally, middle<\/em> class.<\/p>\n

For simplicity’s sake, here is 1970 and 2012 right next to one another. \u00a0Notice that the 1970 map involves a lot more grey (middle class) and the 2012 map involves a lot more green (rich) and especially orange (poor).<\/p>\n

\"1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here’s the animation:<\/p>\n

\"1\"<\/a>For another interesting measure of the shrinking middle class, see our post showing increases in high paying and low paying jobs, but decreases in jobs that pay middle income wages<\/a>.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By now most readers are likely familiar with the idea that the American middle class is shrinking. \u00a0Most income and wealth gains over the past 40 or so years have gone to the richest Americans, while poverty is spreading and getting deeper. \u00a0As a result, the percent of Americans who can reasonably claim to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":62248,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,36,23635,253,3920],"class_list":["post-62244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-economics","tag-economics-history","tag-history","tag-nation-united-states"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/04\/1a.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62244","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=62244"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62855,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62244\/revisions\/62855"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}