ABSTRACT
The story of the middle-class squeeze of the 1980s is well known. Middle-class incomes stagnated as real wages declined for males. Only the continuing rise in two-earner families and the increase in wives’ hours of paid work prevented a significant erosion of middle-class living standards during that decade. Meanwhile, the number of families living in poverty grew while income and wealth soared among the top 1% of households. All of the progress toward greater equality achieved during the postwar period was reversed.
