decline in the level of wages earned by white males.

According to a University of Michigan study, 39 percent of the population, in the years from 1968 to 1972, earned incomes that fell behind inflation. During the next four-year period, the proportion rose to 43 percent; in the period 1978-1982, it rose all the way to 56 percent. A study by Eli Ginzberg reports that the middle-income share of new jobs fell by nearly 20 percent between 1979 and 1984, while the low-income share (jobs paying less than $7,000 a year, according to Ginzberg's definition) rose to more than 50 percent.

All this evidence undermines the claim that the middle class is growing, if the term refers to a class of nonmanual workers whose jobs require a good deal of education and assure a comfortable income. "As some of its members fall into poverty and others acquire wealth, it has been shrinking," according to a recent report in Time. Median family income, adjusted for inflation, remains where it was in the early seventies. But the percentage of middle-income households (those earning between $20,000 and $60,000 a year, in 1985 dollars) declined from 53 percent in 1973 to 49 percent in 1985. These figures may even "overstate the fortunes of the middle class," Time admits, since its standard of living has declined along with its numbers. Middle-class incomes have fallen far behind the steep inflation of housing prices and college tuitions, thereby endangering two of the cherished indications of middle-class status. Only by going into debt and by sending their wives into the work force can middle-income groups keep up even a semblance of that status. More than half of American households now owe more than they are worth. In 1985, household debt relative to disposable income rose to almost 90 percent, a postwar high.

Even in the early seventies, at the height of postwar prosperity, an "intermediate" income, as defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, hardly conferred a lavish or even a comfortable standard of living. A study conducted by the United Auto Workers found that an "intermediate" income would allow a family to buy a two-year-old car and keep it for four years, to buy a vacuum cleaner that would have to last for fourteen years and a toaster good for thirty-three, to go to the movies once every three months, and to save nothing at all. In 1970, some 35 percent of American families and 60 percent of working-class families lived on less than $I0,000 a year—that is, below the "intermediate" level. The average fam

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