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1 Scott A. Hodge, Married Couples with Children No Longer in Statistical Middle Class 1 (2007)

handle is hein.taxfoundation/ffhgxz0001 and id is 1 raw text is: N.....O January 29, 2007 Married Couples with Children No Longer in Statistical Middle Class by Scott A. ode Fiscal Fact No. 76 This week, the House Ways and Means Committee will hold a hearing on the economic challenges facing the middle class. The purpose of the hearing is to investigate the notion that today's families are experiencing economic pressures greater than those faced by their parents' or grandparents' generations. To understand this issue, however, Members first need to understand how different today's families are from those of 40 or 50 years ago and how demographic changes have affected the notions of who is middle-class and who is upper-income in America. If by middle class we mean intact families with children (the stereotypical family of four), then these families no longer comprise the majority of the statistical middle 20 percent of taxpayers. The majority of families with children now populate the wealthiest 40 percent of Americans, in part because of the growth in dual-earner households. So if Ways and Means members focus too much on the median family or median taxpayers they will not be accurately portraying the economic status of today's working families. Figure 1 below looks at the composition of taxpayers in 1960, back in Leave it to Beaver days. The population of taxpayers is divided evenly into five equal parts, or quintiles, each with 20 percent of taxpayers. Focusing specifically on the middle quintile, we can see that the stereotype was true: nearly 70 percent were married couples and most were raising children. Indeed, in 1960, married couples comprised the majority of every group of taxpayers except for the lowest 20 percent. Of that low-income group, 73 percent were single filers.

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