A Closer Look at Middle-Class Decline

By DAVID LEONHARDT, NYT

No one can accuse the presidential campaign of ignoring the American economy or the plight of the middle class. Yet the scale and the complexity of the problem are typically lost amid the charged back-and-forth between President Obama and Mitt Romney.

For the first time since the Great Depression, middle-class families have been losing ground for more than a decade. They, and the poor, have struggled particularly badly since the financial crisis led to a global recession in 2008. The idea that living standards inevitably improve from one generation to the next is under threat. Many of the bedrock assumptions of American culture -- about work, progress, fairness and optimism -- are being shaken. Arguably no question is more central to the country's global standing than whether the economy will perform better in the future than it has in the recent past.

Over the next few months on this blog, several colleagues and I will look in some detail at the challenge and at possible ways forward, and we'll encourage you to weigh in with questions, ideas and other feedback. Later in the presidential campaign, I'll produce an article with my take, with the hope that it will serve as a jumping off point to further debate. This article will be one of a handful that The Times produces on the biggest issues facing the country as it chooses its leader for the next four years. We're calling the series the Agenda.

Heading into the project, I see the economy's problems along these broad lines:

Since median inflation-adjusted family income peaked in 2000 at $64,232, it has fallen roughly 6 percent. You won't find another 12-year period with an income decline since the aftermath of the Depression.

(More here.)