By Tara Siegel Bernard and |
Image: Bill Branson for the National Cancer Institute
Examine the typical American family’s monthly budget, line by line, and a larger story emerges about how the middle class has evolved.
What it means to be middle class hasn’t changed much — there’s a steady job, the ability to comfortably raise a family if you choose to, a home to call your own, an annual vacation. But what it takes to achieve all that has become more challenging.
The costs of housing, health care and education are consuming ever larger shares of household budgets, and have risen faster than incomes. Today’s middle-class families are working longer, managing new kinds of stress and shouldering greater financial risks than previous generations did. They’re also making different kinds of tradeoffs.
Read more at: NYT