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CIAO DATE: 10/5/2006
Where Did They Go? The Decline of Middle-Income Neighborhoods in Metropolitan America
Jason C. Booza, Jackie Cutsinger, George Galster
June 2006
Abstract
Middle-income families, the icon of the American Dream, have become a somewhat less prominent part of the American demographic profile over the last quartercentury. Numerous researchers have documented how growing economic inequality in the U.S., characterized by an increasing bifurcation of the income distribution, has slowed the growth of a once-broad American middle class.
Researchers have also probed the societal implications of rising economic inequality. According to Dreier, Mollenkopf, and Swanstrom, “A healthy democracy depends on a strong middle class, which functions as a moderating force between the potentially divisive demands of the rich and poor.” Rising inequality associated with the decline of the middle class may also erode the nation’s social and political fabric; researchers like Robert Putnam and William Julius Wilson have pointed to the deleterious effects that inequality has on social relations. Still others have related increasing economic inequality to a growing concentration of political power among the well-off.
