![]() ![]() “Our economy is driven by consumer spending.” “When people have stable, middle-class incomes, it means they have money in their pocket to consume all kinds of goods, whether that’s purchasing housing, buying new clothes, buying cars, buying refrigerators,” Brownell said. “Even though as a whole, our economy is successful in terms of what it’s producing and the amount of wealth it’s producing, we’re not seeing that translate into incomes that will support families here in San Diego and across California,” he said.Īnd he believes that is not economically sustainable. Peter Brownell, research director at San Diego’s Center on Policy Initiatives, said the inability of California’s middle class to afford homes, exposes a vulnerability in the state’s economy. “Where I live, all the older people keep complaining, `My kids keep visiting me just waiting for me to drop dead so they can have the house.’ ” “Who has got that kind of money?” asked Kotkin. Sometime over the next decade, it changed and now that figure has jumped to as high as 10 times. Kotkin said California families used to pay three times their income for a home in 1970. ![]() The Public Policy Institute of California classifies middle income earners as those making between $49,716 and $174,006 based on 2017 calculations. She said her middle class income goes a lot further in Texas than in California. “We sold an 1,800 square-foot home in San Diego and now live in a 4,000 square-foot home and are still paying less on our mortgage,” Rudiger said. Rudiger and her husband, Tony, moved their two children to Texas last year. “We couldn’t afford to live there with almost half of our income paying for our housing, our property taxes, our utilities so my husband and I both being full-time employees, we could keep up but we could never get ahead.” “California opened their doors and basically kicked us out,” Kelly Rudiger said. Many are moving to Texas, Arizona, Nevada and Oregon. “The key group leaving is basically in their 30s, 40s and 50s tending to be making about $100,000 to $200,000 a year,” Kotkin said, citing Internal Revenue Service data.īetween 20, California lost 1 million more domestic residents than have come into the state, according to the IRS. In California, some have risen to the upper class and others have slid down. The number of middle-income Americans slipped from 61 percent in 1971 to 50 percent in 2015, according to the Pew Research Center. That trend almost mirrors patterns across the country. Census Bureau.Since 1970, California’s share of the middle class fell from 60 percent to just over half the population. " The American Middle Class is Losing Ground," Pages 4 - 5. " Utopian Thinking: The Easy Way to Eradicate Poverty." " The 9.9 Percent is the New American Aristocracy." " Why the 20%, and Not the 1% Are the Real Problem." " The Growing Size and Incomes of the Upper Middle Class,". “ Highest Median Household Income on Record?” " How much money you have to earn to be in the top 1%." ![]() “ Income Inequality in the United States.”ĬNBC. “ America’s Wealth Gap Between Middle-Income and Upper-Income Families Is Widest on Record.”Įconomic Policy Institute. " Most Americans Aren’t Middle Class Anymore." Census Bureau, " The Nation's Older Population Is Still Growing, Census Bureau Reports."įiveThirtyEight. " The American Middle Class is Losing Ground,". “ How the American middle class has changed in the past five decades.” The lives of families making the median income look very different, given the vastly different cost-of-living levels across the U.S. The problem is that your money probably does not buy you the same kind of life when you live in a big coastal city versus a rural setting in the middle of the country. You can break down your class status first by state, metropolitan area, income before taxes, and members of the household, then by education level, age, race, and marital status. If you want to know exactly how you fit into the income class matrix, the Pew Research Center has a recently updated income calculator. Easy, right? Just take your household income and see where you fit, given these numbers. But, as a quick calculation, those making less than $43,350 make up the lower-income bracket, while those making more than $130,000 make up the upper-income bracket. This is a rough estimate and doesn't account for family size or location. This Pew classification means that the category of middle income is made up of people making somewhere between $43,350 and $130,000. Pew defines the middle class as those earning from two-thirds to double the median household income. Census Bureau shows that the 2021 median household income was the highest on record at just around $65,000. ![]() So, the obvious follow-up question is: Where does that leave me? Into which class do I fall? ![]()
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