Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Meals For All: An Examination Of The Effects Of Free School Meals On Middle Class Households, Ryan Elizabeth Comerford

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Universal meal programs were created to mitigate childhood food insecurity in low-income communities. It is well known that poverty and food insecurity go hand-in-hand and are often the basis for much academic research within the realm of childhood food insecurity. This study investigates the impact of universal meal programs on food insecurity from a different perspective, that of the middle class. As an under-researched area, the hope is to draw attention to the needs of communities that are often forgotten and may not qualify for social programs, in an effort to reform existing federal policy regarding Universal Meal programs. Utilizing …

“You Never Know” Work And Precarity In Las Vegas Before And During Covid-19, Richard Reeves, Morgan Welch, Hannah Van Drie

Policy Briefs and Reports

In this brief we examine work and work-based policies in Las Vegas, Nevada – a theme that emerged strongly from focus group data collected in the fall of 2019. The middle-class Americans we talked with were concerned about upward mobility, the changing landscape of work as a result of automation and skills training, scheduling uncertainty, and employee benefits like time off and paid leave. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted and exacerbated these pre-existing issues for many workers. Much of the policy agenda in the last year has been understandably reactionary, as policymakers addressed immediate issues such as unemployment insurance, keeping workers …

Housing - Las Vegas And The Middle Class, Brookings Mountain West

Brookings Mountain West Special Events

Brookings Mountain West presents an event focusing on housing as part of “Las Vegas and the Middle Class,” a major project exploring public policy initiatives designed to improve the quality of life of the middle class in Las Vegas and to increase the number of people rising to join its ranks. Through independent, non-partisan analysis and policy development, we seek to advance public understanding of the challenges facing the middle class in Las Vegas, as well as barriers to upward mobility.

This event features presentations that examine Las Vegas as a model for understanding issues critical to the growth of …

Las Vegas And The Middle Class, Brookings Mountain West

Brookings Scholar Lecture Series

On Friday November 9, 2018, Brookings Mountain West launched “Las Vegas and the Middle Class,” a major project exploring public policy initiatives designed to improve the quality of life of the middle class in Las Vegas, and to increase the number of people rising to join its ranks. Through independent, non-partisan analysis and policy development, the project aims to advance public understanding of the challenges facing the middle class in Las Vegas, and barriers to upward mobility. In collaboration with visiting scholars from the Brookings Institution - including Richard Reeves, Camille Busette, and others – experts at Brookings Mountain West, …

2017-14 China's Emerging Global Middle Class, Bjorn Gustafsson, Terry Sicular, Xiuna Yang

Centre for Human Capital and Productivity. CHCP Working Papers

No abstract provided.

Elite And Ethical: The Defensive Distinctions Of Middle-Class Bicycling In Bangalore, India, Manisha Anantharaman

School of Liberal Arts Faculty Works

This article applies social practice theory to study the emergence of sustainable consumption practices like bicycling among the new middle classes of Bangalore, India. I argue that expansions of bicycling practices are dependent on the construction of defensive distinctions,which I define as distinctions that draw equally on lifestyle-based and ethics-based discourses to normalize bicycling among Bangalore’s middle classes. With their environmental discourses and signage, middle-class cyclists make claims to being ethical actors and ecological citizens concerned about global environments. Their high-end bicycles and special gear enable them to maintain their social status in personal and professional circles, despite adopting …

The Antipolitics Of Food In Middle-Class America, Neri De Kramer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation provides an ethnographic account of the food and parenting practices of a diverse group of middle-class families in the Mount Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia. It starts from the basic premise that the economic pressures on the American middle classes find expression in family life around the socially reproductive work of choosing food and parenting.

The current economic climate marked with extreme and rising income inequality, low growth, high unemployment and stagnating wages has complicated the reproduction process for all parents in this study, regardless of income. Scholars have described how this concern for the future of the next …

Bridging The Gap Between Unmet Legal Needs And An Oversupply Of Lawyers: Creating Neighborhood Law Offices - The Philadelphia Experiment, Jules Lobel, Matthew Chapman

Articles

In the United States there is, simultaneously, an abundance of unemployed lawyers and a significant unmet need for legal care among middle-class households. This unfortunate paradox is protected by ideological, cultural, and practical paradigms both inside the legal community and out. These paradigms include the legal chase for prestige, the consumer’s inability to recognize a legal need, and the growing mountain of debt new lawyers enter the profession with. This article will discuss a very successful National Lawyers Guild experiment from 1930s-era Philadelphia that addressed a similar situation, in a time with similar paradigms, by emphasizing community-connected lawyering. That is, …

Why You Should Care About The Threatened Middle Class, Jill Littrell, Fred Brooks, Jan Ivery, Mary Ohmer

jill l littrell Dr.

In the last two decades, the income and security of the individual middle class worker has declined and the gap between the middle class and the wealthy has widened. We explain how this is bad for democracy, the economy, and the aggregate health of the nation. We examine the governmental policies and interventions that increased the middle class following the depression and maintained its vigor through the post-World War II period. The impetus for these changes in governmental policies in the 1930s was to end the Great Depression. We pose the question of whether a nation can recover from a …

Middle Class And Pro-Poor Growth In Egypt: The Missing Connection, Abeer Rashdan

Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

Assessing whether distributional changes are “pro-poor” has become increasingly widespread in academic and policy circles. Based on the methodology of Ravallion and Chen (2003), Kakwani and Pernia (2000) and Kakwani, Khandker, and Son (2003) using grouped data, the paper generates three indices to test whether distributional changes were indeed pro-poor during the period (1990-2008). Another issue is whether pro-poor judgments should be correlative with the size of the middle class. The paper presents the evolution of middle class in Egypt using different thresholds. The middle class in Egypt has followed the path of bulging in size under a certain threshold …

Can You Hear The People Sing: Community Theater, Play And The Middle Class, Heather Marie Moats

LSU Master's Theses

Over the last century community, or “little”, theaters have popped up all over the United States as a way for amateur actors to perform. Academic research in both anthropology and theater studies have greatly overlooked and dismissed these theaters. Using data collected via ethnographic methods over the course of two musical productions, approximately seven months total, at a community theater in Baton Rouge, Louisiana I hope to demonstrate both why individuals, predominately within the middle class, with limited leisure time choose to spend it volunteering at a community theater as well as some of the social and interpersonal benefits it …

The Uruguayan Tax Reform Of 2006: Why Didn't It Fail?, Andres Rius

Andres Rius

No abstract provided.

Stew Of Discontent:“Middle Class” Americans' Economic Populism In The 1990s And Beyond, Jonathan Martin

Jonathan Martin

This article highlights the hidden subtlety of ordinary Americans' economic populist sentiment, a longstanding and politically pivotal form of popular resentment concerning class inequalities. Based on my research in the late 1990s, I describe how economic populist attitudes in the United States can be much more complex than suggested in the relevant literature. I use data from interviews with a small number of “ordinary middle class” Americans to illustrate little known nuances in these attitudes and to highlight how such subtleties are overlooked in prevailing characterizations of public opinion. I suggest that the oversight is the result of the fragmentary …

Economic Remittances To Middle Class Peruvian Families : Origins, Use And Impact, Guadalupe Morales Gotsch

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Abstract

Middle-Class Crisis In The Colonization Transition: Comparing Catalysts And Consequences In Taiwan, 1988-2008, Jui-Chang Jao

Theses and Dissertations--Sociology

The Taiwanese middle class has experienced two waves of crisis over the past three decades in the context of a colonization transition involving globalization and democratization as primary catalysts. On the economic front, Taiwan’s economy has become increasingly integrated into the Chinese market, resulting approximately one million of the Taiwanese middle class relocating to China. Moreover, neoliberal economic reforms have led to a downsized state sector of the Taiwanese economy. These economic changes affect the growth and stability of the Taiwanese middle class. Meanwhile, on the political front, an ongoing democratic consolidation and decolonization efforts have brought about significant political …

The Disappearing Middle Class: Implications For Politics And Public Policy, Trevor Richard Beltz

CMC Senior Theses

What does it mean to be middle class? The majority of Americans define themselves as members of the middle class, regardless of their wealth. The number of Americans that affiliate with the middle class alludes to the idea that it cannot be defined simply by level of income, number of assets, type of job, etc. The middle class is a lifestyle as much as it is a group of similarly minded people, just as it is a social construct as much as it is an economic construct. Yet as the masses fall away from the elite, and changes continue to …

Polarization And The Middle Class, Maximo Rossi, Fernando Borraz, Nicolas Gonzalez

Maximo Rossi

There is an increasing literature that discusses how to measure the middle class. Some approaches are based on an arbitrary deÖnition such as income quartiles or the poverty line. Recently, Foster and Wolfson developed a methodology which lacks of arbitrariness that enables us to compare the middle class of two di§erent income distributions. We apply this new tool jointly with a complementary method ñrelative distribution approach- to household income data in 1994-2004 and 2004-2010, to analyze the evolution of the middle class and polarization in Uruguay. During the Örst period, which is characterized by an increasing income inequality, we Önd …

"We're Parents Too!" Changes In Father Involvement In Domestic Labor Among Urban Middle Class Dual-Worker Couples, Ruth Burgett Jolie

Anthropology ETDs

The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate fathers involvement in domestic labor among middle class, dual-worker families in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I argue that men's participation in domestic labor is affected by their parental identities. Three things influence parental identity: (1) demographics, including socioeconomic position, age, race/ethnicity, (2) religiosity, meaning ones adherence to religious values and participation in a formal religious institution (Wilcox 2002:781), and (3) parental ideology, denoting the belief structure surrounding what a parent ought to do. Demography and religiosity are themselves mediated by parental ideology, and in turn also further shape, parental ideology. Parental ideology directly …

Why You Should Care About The Threatened Middle Class, Jill Littrell, Fred Brooks, Jan Ivery, Mary L. Ohmer

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

In the last two decades, the income and security of the individual middle class worker has declined and the gap between the middle class and the wealthy has widened. We explain how this is bad for democracy, the economy, and the aggregate health of the nation. We examine the governmental policies and interventions that increased the middle class following the depression and maintained its vigor through the post-World War II period. The impetus for these changes in governmental policies in the 1930s was to end the Great Depression. We pose the question of whether a nation can recover from a …

Why You Should Care About The Threatened Middle Class, Jill Littrell, Fred Brooks, Jan Ivery, Mary Ohmer

SW Publications

In the last two decades, the income and security of the individual middle class worker has declined and the gap between the middle class and the wealthy has widened. We explain how this is bad for democracy, the economy, and the aggregate health of the nation. We examine the governmental policies and interventions that increased the middle class following the depression and maintained its vigor through the post-World War II period. The impetus for these changes in governmental policies in the 1930s was to end the Great Depression. We pose the question of whether a nation can recover from a …

What Happened To The Middle Class In The New Market Economies? The Case Of Croatia And Poland, Joanna Tyrowicz, Iva Tomić

Joanna Tyrowicz

Transition countries are believed to have undergone signifi cant social and economic structural changes. Indeed, the early transition resulted in the modifi cation of ownership structure and recognized processes of labor reallocation as well as in rapid educational booms in many Central and Eastern European countries. In this paper we shed some light on the changes regarding the size and composition of the middle class in two transition countries, Croatia and Poland, in the period 1995-2008. In general, the size of the middle class – as defi ned by individuals with wages around the median – decreased in Poland roughly …

Riding On The Wave? Middle Class In Transition, Joanna Tyrowicz, Joanna Nestorowicz

Joanna Tyrowicz

In this paper we inquire into how structural social changes associated with economic transition affected the relative position of the so called ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ middle classes. We use Polish quarterly labor force surveys over the period 1995-2007 and analyze the distribution of self-reported wages and educational attainment across social groups. In the analysis we account for differences observed in the metropolies (usually benefiting immensely from the economic changes) and non-metropolitan areas (where most of the negative consequences are felt).

We find that although transition has contributed to greater inequalities both in terms of earned income and education, traditional middle …

The Developing World's Bulging (But Vulnerable) Middle Class, Martin Ravallion

Martin Ravallion

The “developing world’s middle class” is defined as those who live above the median poverty line of developing countries but are still poor by US standards; the “Western middle class” are those not poor by US standards. Although barely 80 million people in the developing world entered the Western middle class over 1990-2002, economic growth and global distributional shifts allowed an extra 1.2 billion people to join the developing world’s middle class. Four-fifths came from Asia, and half from China. Most remained fairly close to poverty, with incomes bunched up just above $2 a day. One in six people now …

A Research Note On The Middle Class And Democracy In Thailand, Erik Martinez Kuhonta

Erik Kuhonta

No abstract provided.

Secrets And Hiding Places: The Worth Of Women In Nicholas Nickleby, Elizabeth Redmond

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

In early Victorian England, married women were denied the legal right to own property, and social convention remanded them to ostracism if they chose to remain single. Likewise, jobs that were available to women failed to pay a living wage, so women were placed under tremendous economic and social pressure to marry. In Charles Dickens' novel, Nicholas Nickleby, he depicts how marriage becomes manipulated within the working and middle classes as a means to acquire wealth. Dickens also compares the repression of women to the abuse suffered by school children in the Yorkshire schools, which had a reputation for neglecting …

The Middle Class And Political Change In China: Chinese Middle Class's Attitudinal And Behavioral Orientations Toward Democracy, Chunlong Lu

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Does the middle class in China think and act democratically and hence serve as the harbinger of democratic development in that country? Little empirical work has been done to systematically address this crucial question. The primary goals of this dissertation are to explore the level of attitudinal support for democracy among Chinese middle class individuals, examine their behavioral orientations toward politics, and provide a comprehensive assessment of the role of the Chinese middle class in the evolution of the Chinese political system. This dissertation argues that the middle class in China consists of the following four occupational groups: self-employed laborers, …

Rights Consciousness, Economic Interests, And The 2003 District-Level People?S Congress Elections In China: Middle Class Motivations And Democratic Implications, Xinsong Wang

Political Science Theses

This thesis examines the motivations of the Chinese middle class members to run for District-level people’s congress (DPC) elections in Shenzhen and Beijing in 2003. It is interested in exploring why the middle class members wanted to run for the DPC positions that do not have real political power in China, and how their behavior can influence political change in China. By systematically analyzing the candidates’ campaign speeches and activities, this study reveals that the major motivating factors behind the middle class candidates’ decision to run for the elections were to protect their property interests and their increasing desire to …

Democracy And The Thai Middle Class: Globalization, Modernization, And Constitutional Change, Neil A. Englehart

Political Science Faculty Publications

Although democratization in Thailand in the 1990s is commonly characterized as a classic case of modernization theory in action, economic globalization provides a better explanation for Thailand's democratization process. Economic growth in the country has been based on foreign capital and has created a globalized economy sensitive to the confidence of world capital markets. Moreover, the Thai middle classes cannot be characterized as having coherent political preferences, and it is arguable that the 1992 middle class protests were more about suspicions of official corruption than about democracy.

Downsizing America In The Twentieth Century: A Sociological And Theoretical Analysis Of The Shrinking Middle Class, Terreea Lynne Adams

Institute for the Humanities Theses

Downsizing is the process by which a firm decreases its number of employees, even during times of a strong economy, with the stated purpose of generating greater efficiency, productivity and of course, profit. The downsizing trend in the United States during the past three decades has resulted in an enormous shift in the structure of our society. Various theorists, sociologists and economists employ differing ways of looking at this downsizing trend and its effects on the largest segment of the population; that is, the middle class.

lndications of a healthy economy are low levels of unemployment and poverty-. Downsizing involves …

Winning The Presidency: The Vision And Values Approach, Joshua H. Sandman

Political Science Faculty Publications

This paper will deal with the presidential election contest. It will suggest, based on research on the presidential election process, that the presidential candidate who best articulates, verbally and symbolically, the visions and values most traditional to American society, of the broadest section of the middle class, will win the presidental election. The results of the 1988 presidential election affirm the soundness of this thesis.

Voting in a presidential election is influenced by numerous forces. This visions and values concept, to be more fully discussed below, appears to have emerged, however, over the past two decades as a decisive element …