How is the Middle Class Doing?
1. Just the people in working years, not everyone in the income distribution
2. Yes because it doesn't make sense to measure the class that is mostly retired or choosing a lower income job because they primarily live off of their savings.
3. This matters because we cannot just look at the numbers without noticing the people in the comparison. The numbers may look stagnant but the actual group of people being measured has changed.
The Paradox of Household Income
1. "The change in the average isn't always the average of the changes". The so called slow growth of the middle class household income is not necessarily because people are making less money but because the family structure is different.
2. No, the family structure heavily includes the average poverty numbers. So if we continue to see increase in single-earner households poverty rates may stay higher, but if this family structure changes, we might find a reduction in poverty, more than we would have in the past.
3. This cause and effect can go both ways, because yes, low marriage rates are a cause of poor economic performances, but it goes the other way too. If men or women are not very financially stable, it may make marriage seem less appealing to some, and marriage rates would decrease.
4. Neither the 25% nor the 4% are wrong, they are just measuring different things. The 4% fall of poverty is what actually happened because it includes changes in household structures. On the other hand, the 25% decline of poverty shows us what would have been true if household structures stayed the exact same.
Do the Rich Get all the Gains?
1. The researchers use panel data which follows the same people throughout the years. They track these people who started at the bottom, middle or the top classes. This allows them to track actual income changes over time.
2. Because panel data is harder to collect, takes a long time, and is more expensive. Some people will stop, or drop out which messes up the data being tracked.
Let's Party like it's 1973!
1. No because the quality of the goods and services is so much worse than the quality of stuff we have today. Compared to the past, the stuff we have today is much better quality.
2. The poorest Americans may prefer living in 1973 because the basic things for living would have been more affordable. I still don't think many would go back because, again, goods/services were still much worse quality than they are now. For example, things like healthcare and safety were much worse back then. We are much more advanced now.
3. Examples are technology, healthcare, transportation, household appliances, and food.
4. Public schools quality may have gotten worse in certain areas, along with the quality of our environment.
5. I think that happiness shouldn't really be measured by what we have, but overall, I would say that people today enjoy more comfort, safety, and convenience than in the past.
The Challenge of Inequality
1. The realities of poverty are that many people who are poor work very hard, people move in and out of being poor, and social factors such as family structure or health play a big role in their economic status. Myths of poverty include that poverty is always a result of laziness, and that poor people stay poor their whole life.
2. We need to understand that the root causes of poverty are due to things such as education levels, job changes, family life, and health.