The Numbers Game: How's The Middle Class Doing?

We often hear that the middle class is stagnating and making no economic progress over the last four decades. Those making this claim use statistics to back up this pessimistic conclusion. Yet it is easy to find other statistics that lead to a different conclusion and that show that the middle class's standard of living has in fact been growing. This video explores how different assumptions can easily change our perception of how the economy treats the middle class. The bottom line is that it data questions like these are often more complicated than they appear to be.
To watch the 2nd episode in this series, "The Paradox of Household Income", click here: bit.ly/2nxxGYz
Learn more here: bit.ly/2BFGCQc
Additional Sources
Read Russ' testimony to the Joint Economic Committee, "Examining the Rise of American Earnings and Living Standards," available here: www.jec.senate...
Russ Roberts hosts EconTalk with guest Richard Burkhauser of Cornell University and talks about the state of the middle class, available here (www.econtalk.or....
Read “What Do Economists Actually Know?” by Russ Roberts, available here (shift.newco.co....
Russ Roberts talks with Gabriel Zucman of the University of California in this EconTalk about his research on inequality and the distribution of income in the United States over the last 35 years, available here (www.econtalk.or....