Guest Editorial: From Working Class to Middle Class

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13088
• Author: Maria P. Aristigueta,Pablo I. McConnie‐Saad
• Published date: 01 September 2019
• Date: 01 September 2019

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760 Public Administration Review • Septe mber | Oct ober 2 019

Maria P. Aristigueta

Pablo I. McConnie-Saad

University of Delaware

Guest Editorial: From Working Class to Middle Class

Retirement plans, college savings, mortgage

payments, credit card debt, and loan

repayments are some of the items of growing

concern for the American working and middle

classes. The old adage that if you work hard and

play by the rules, you will move up in life no longer

resonates with millions of hardworking Americans.

Our economy and its impact on working and

middle-class lives has become one of the most salient

issues in our society. The middle class has remained

stagnant at best, and there is little agreement on

how to rebuild it. As a result, former Vice President

Joseph R. Biden, Jr. called upon leading scholars and

thinkers from the field of public affairs to find policy

solutions to revitalize what he regards as an ailing

middle class in this country, stating that, without a

strong middle class, democracy as we know it will

suffer.

Finding a policy prescription to this problem has

proven difficult as there are institutional, behavioral,

and methodological components that complicate our

understanding of the structure of the middle class. A

recent report from the American Enterprise Institute

sheds light on how the issue is perceived along the

partisan divide:

The nuanced version of the progressive

view holds that the problem begins with

economics—growing income inequality,

disappearing jobs, stagnant wages, downward

mobility—which then triggers a broad array

of cultural consequences, including weaker

families and fragmenting communities.

Nuanced conservatives do not deny that

the US is undergoing a historic economic

transformation. But they tend to see economic

effects as secondary, exacerbating but not

causing a more fundamental weakening of

social norms—that able- bodied men should

work, that they are responsible for providing for

their families, that couples should marry before

having children. (Cass et al. 2018, 13)

This begs the questions what is the source for the

decline in the middle class, and how can the middle

class be restored? Furthermore, a clear definition that

distinguishes between the working and middle classes

needs to be established. Who are the working class?

What is necessary in order for the working class to

become the middle class? This symposium aims to

provide answers to some of these questions and to

offer possible solutions, as well as to demonstrate that

this is not simply a partisan issue but rather a national

problem.

Data show that, since the economic recession and

financial crisis of 2008, unemployment has returned

to a 10-year low and that the U.S. economy has

continued to grow at a healthy rate of nearly 3 percent.

According to Kochhar, “about half (52%) of American

adults lived in middle-class households in 2016.

This is virtually unchanged from the 51% who were

middle class in 2011” (Kochhar, 2018). The problem

is that, while the size of the nation’s middle class

remained relatively stable, financial gains for middle-

income Americans during this period were modest

compared with those of higher-income households,

causing the income disparity between the groups to

grow. The country has experienced years of decline

in the middle class in the past; however, the “recent

stability in the share of adults living in middle-

income households marks a shift from a decades-long

downward trend. From 1971 to 2011, the share of

adults in the middle class fell by 10 percentage points”

(Kochhar 2018). So, if we are looking at the overall

trend, despite seeing some stability, we must recognize

that it is the stability of a diminished middle class.

The working class, on the other hand, is an

understudied group. A 2018 Brookings Institution

report explains that little is known about working-

class problems because there is no long history of

public policy trial and error to learn from. It raises

the simplest questions regarding who should be

considered part of the working class and how large

and diverse is the group? What is known is that the

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 79, Iss. 5, pp. 760–762. © 2019 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13088.

Pablo I. McConnie-Saad is doctoral

student in Urban Affairs & Public Policy

at the Biden School of Public Policy and

Administration, University of Delaware. His

research focuses on democratic institutions

and economic development.

E-mail: pmcconni@udel.edu

Maria P. Aristigueta holds the Charles

P. Messick chair of public administration, is

professor and director of the Biden School

of Public Policy and Administration, and

is a senior policy fellow at the Institute

for Public Administration, University of

Delaware. Her teaching and research

interests include creating strong institutions

to strengthen democracy, particularly as

it pertains to organizational behavior and

performance management.

E-mail: mariaa@udel.edu

Viewpoint

Stephen E. Condrey

and Tonya Neaves,

Associate Editors