ABSTRACT
The fate of Missing Class families is a test for this country of what it can offer to those citizens-immigrants and native-born alike-who have pulled themselves off the floor that poverty represents. This chapter explains a temporary respite in a single generation from the problems of poverty, only to see it emerge again in the children of the Missing Class. It is one of the many ways that life in the Missing Class is so delicately held together, even if it is clearly more comfortable than living below the poverty line. Not so. Missing Class families know far too many people who are genuinely mired in hardship to think that they deserve pity. The Missing Class sees itself as a success story from this vantage point—albeit one hanging on by its fingernails. "Missing Class" is composed of households earning roughly between $20,000 and $40,000 for a family of four.
