scholarly journals Modigliani Meets Minsky: Inequality, Debt, and Financial Fragility in America, 1950-2016

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-77
Author(s):  
Alina K. Bartscher ◽  
Moritz Kuhn ◽  
Moritz Schularick ◽  
Ulrike I. Steins
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Low Income ◽  
House Price ◽  
The United States ◽  
Financial Fragility ◽  
Income Growth ◽  
Household Debt ◽  
Housing Wealth ◽  
Home Equity ◽  
Middle Class Families

This paper studies the secular increase in U.S. household debt and its relation to growing income inequality and financial fragility. We exploit a new household-level dataset that covers the joint distributions of debt, income, and wealth in the United States over the past seven decades. The data show that increased borrowing by middle-class families with low income growth played a central role in rising indebtedness. Debt-to-income ratios have risen most dramatically for households between the 50th and 90th percentiles of the income distribution. While their income growth was low, middle-class families borrowed against the sizable housing wealth gains from rising home prices. Home equity borrowing accounts for about half of the increase in U.S. household debt between the 1970s and 2007. The resulting debt increase made balance sheets more sensitive to income and house price fluctuations and turned the American middle class into the epicenter of growing financial fragility.

scholarly journals A Critical Review of Bilingual Education in the United States: From Basements and Pride to Boutiques and Profit

2017 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 14-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nelson Flores ◽  
Ofelia García
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Bilingual Education ◽  
Low Income ◽  
The United States ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Structural Barriers ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Immersion Programs ◽  
Middle Class Families

ABSTRACTIn this article we connect the institutionalization of bilingual education to a post–Civil Rights racial formation that located the root of educational inequalities in the psychological condition of people of color in ways that obscured the structural barriers confronting communities of color. Within this context, bilingual education was institutionalized with the goal of instilling cultural pride in Latinx students in ways that would remediate their perceived linguistic deficiencies. This left bilingual educators struggling to develop affirmative spaces for Latinx children within a context where these students continued to be devalued by the broader school and societal context. More recent years have witnessed the dismantling of these affirmative spaces and their replacement with two-way immersion programs that seek to cater to White middle-class families. While these programs have offered new spaces for the affirmation of the bilingualism of Latinx children, they do little to address the power hierarchies between the low-income Latinx communities and White middle-class communities that are being served by these programs. We end with a call to situate struggles for bilingual education within broader efforts to combat the racialization of Latinx and other minoritized communities.

Theorizing Gentrification as a Process of Racial Capitalism

2021 ◽  
pp. 153568412110547
Author(s):  
Zawadi Rucks-Ahidiana
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Racial Differences ◽  
Low Income ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Composition ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Racial Capitalism ◽  
Quantitative Studies ◽  
Prior Literature

Academics largely define gentrification based on changes in the class demographics of neighborhood residents from predominately low-income to middle-class. This ignores that gentrification always occurs in spaces defined by both class and race. In this article, I use the lens of racial capitalism to theorize gentrification as a racialized, profit-accumulating process, integrating the perspective that spaces are always racialized to class-centered theories. Using the prior literature on gentrification in the United States, I demonstrate how the concepts of value, valuation, and devaluation from racial capitalism explain where and how gentrification unfolds. Exposure to gentrification varies depending on a neighborhood’s racial composition and the gentrification stakeholders involved, which contributes to racial differences in the scale and pace of change and the implications of those changes for the processes of displacement. Revising our understanding of gentrification to address the racialization of space helps resolve seemingly contradictory findings across qualitative and quantitative studies.

scholarly journals Russian Pro-Natalist Policy and Its Hidden Dilemma

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-402
Author(s):  
Y.V. Latov ◽  
◽  
N.V. Latova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Birth Rate ◽  
Population Decline ◽  
International Studies ◽  
Russian Government ◽  
Less Is More ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Middle Class Families

The demographic policy of the Russian government, which aims to ‘preserve and increase the people’, combines two qualitatively different approaches to understanding the problem of population decline. Most often, the emphasis is placed on stimulating fertility, although there is also an understanding that it is important to raise the quality of their upbringing and education. While the focus on increasing human capital is economically justified, the desire to increase the birth rate has no such justification. The theory of demographic transition proves that stimulating the birth rate is an erroneous goal. The ‘cash for babies’ policy applied in Russia is based on the conviction that children, even those born in poor and dysfunctional families, inevitably ‘pass’ through the education system and become qualified workers. On the basis of this stereotype, the system of pro-natalist incentives is built in such a way that, in accordance with the law of diminishing marginal utility, it creates stronger incentives for poorer families and is therefore actually aimed at increasing the birth rate primarily in the poor strata, having little effect on middle-class families. Meanwhile, modern theories of social capital and labor market signals prove the limited ability of schools and universities to play the role of social elevators. International studies (in particular, in the USA) shows that state benefits for children of poor and disadvantaged families contribute to the reproduction of a culture of poverty. Therefore, when the Russian authorities provide assistance primarily to low-income and single-parent families with children, they create problems for the future. The study proposes to replace the current policy based on the principle ‘more babies but cheaper’ with a policy aimed at middle-class families and based on the principle ‘less is more’. Thus, an orientation towards stimulating population growth is replaced by an orientation towards fostering human capital.

Housing Wealth and Consumption: Evidence from Geographically Linked Microdata

2017 ◽  
Vol 107 (11) ◽  
pp. 3415-3446 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aditya Aladangady
Keyword(s):  
Causal Effect ◽  
House Price ◽  
Housing Markets ◽  
Borrowing Constraints ◽  
Housing Wealth ◽  
Home Equity ◽  
Regional Heterogeneity ◽  
Primary Driver ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Home Values

Rising home values also raise the cost of living, offsetting their impact on consumption. However, additional home equity collateral can loosen borrowing constraints, increasing spending for households that value their current endowment of housing highly. I use geographically linked microdata to exploit regional heterogeneity in housing markets and identify the causal effect of house price fluctuations on consumer spending. A $1 increase in home values leads to a $0.047 increase in spending for homeowners, but a negligible response for renters. Results reflect large responses among credit constrained households, suggesting looser borrowing constraints are a primary driver of the MPC out of housing wealth. (JEL D12, D14, E21, R31)

“Living in Each Other's Pockets”: The Navigation of Social Distances by Middle Class Families in Los Angeles

2006 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 425-450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alesia F. Montgomery
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Spatial Mobility ◽  
Urban Core ◽  
Two Cities ◽  
Hollywood Movies ◽  
Post Civil Rights ◽  
Middle Class Families

In Hollywood movies and dystopian critiques, Los Angeles is two cities: one wealthy, white, and gated, the other impoverished, dark, and carceral. This depiction verges on caricature, eliding the diversity and maneuvers of the region's middle class. Drawing upon ethnographies of middle class families (black, white, Latino, Asian) in affluent areas of West Los Angeles and the Valley and in the low‐income areas that are located south and east of downtown Los Angeles, I explore how and why, and at what costs, parents engage in daily maneuvers to place their children in beneficial settings across the region's vast sprawl. I describe these maneuvers that resemble a game of “musical chairs” as selective flight. In contrast to middle class flight to the suburbs, selective flight involves diurnal rather than residential shifts. Enabling middle‐class families who reside amidst the crumbling infrastructure of the urban core to chase cultural capital and physical safety in ever‐receding advantaged areas, the post‐Civil Rights State expands spatial mobility yet does not close racial distances. The pursuit of ever‐receding spaces of advantage is particularly paradoxical and burdensome for black middle‐class parents.

scholarly journals Dismantling Persistent Deficit Narratives About the Language and Literacy of Culturally and Linguistically Minoritized Children and Youth: Counter-Possibilities

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Su-hua Wang ◽  
Nora Lang ◽  
George C. Bunch ◽  
Samantha Basch ◽  
Sam R. McHugh ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Language Development ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Academic Language ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
The United States ◽  
Language And Literacy ◽  
Linguistic Resources ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Word Gap

Despite decades of efforts, deficit narratives regarding language development and use by children and students from historically marginalized backgrounds remain persistent in the United States. Examining selective literature, we discuss the ideologies that undergird two deficit narratives: the notion that some children have a “word gap” when compared to their White middle-class peers, and students must develop “academic language” to engage in rigorous content learning. The “word gap” concept came from a study wherein a group of young children in low-income families heard fewer words than those in middle-class families. It assumes that language can only be acquired in one way—vocabulary exchange from one parent to one child—and ignores decades of research on diverse pathways for language development. We highlight an alternative perspective that language development builds on children’s experience with cultural practices and the harm on minoritized children by privileging a specific form of vocabulary acquisition. The second deficit narrative concerns “academic language,” a concept championed by scholars aiming to address educational inequity. The construct runs the risk of undervaluing the potential of students from historically marginalized backgrounds to engage in learning using language that is “informal,” nonconventional, or “non-native like.” It also is sometimes used as a rationale to relegate students to special programs isolated from more rigorous academic discourse, thus ironically removing them from opportunities to develop the academic registers they are deemed to be missing. We explore alternative frameworks that shift the focus from linguistic features of academic talk and texts as prerequisites for academic work to the broad range of linguistic resources that students employ for academic purposes in the classroom. Finally, we turn to a positive approach to youths’ language development and use: translanguaging by multilingual learners and their teachers. Translanguaging demonstrates the power of a resource-oriented perspective that values students’ rich communicative repertoires and actively seeks to disrupt language hierarchies. We argue that this approach, however, must be considered in relation to the broader social context to meet its transformative aims. Together, our analysis suggests counter-possibilities to dismantle deficit-oriented narratives and points to promising directions for research and practices to reduce inequity in education.

scholarly journals The Rise of Opportunity Markets: How Did It Happen & What Can We Do?

Daedalus ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 148 (3) ◽  
pp. 19-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
David B. Grusky ◽  
Peter A. Hall ◽  
Hazel Rose Markus
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Low Income ◽  
The United States ◽  
Educational Opportunities

We describe the rise of “opportunity markets” that allow well-off parents to buy opportunity for their children. Although parents cannot directly buy a middle-class outcome for their children, they can buy opportunity indirectly through advantaged access to the schools, neighborhoods, and information that create merit and raise the probability of a middle-class outcome. The rise of opportunity markets happened so gradually that the country has seemingly forgotten that opportunity was not always sold on the market. If the United States were to recommit to equalizing opportunities, this could be pursued by dismantling opportunity markets, by providing low-income parents with the means to participate in them, or by allocating educational opportunities via separate competitions among parents of similar means. The latter approach, which we focus upon here, would not require mobilizing support for a massive redistributive project.

“They're Colonizing My Neighborhood”: (Perceptions of) Social Mix in Canada

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 486-505 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra M. Bucerius ◽  
Sara K. Thompson ◽  
Luca Berardi
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Public Housing ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
The United States ◽  
Urban Neighborhoods ◽  
Neighborhood Revitalization ◽  
Unique Contribution ◽  
Social Mix ◽  
Regent Park

In recent years, urban neighborhoods in many Western nations have undergone neighborhood restructuring initiatives, especially in public housing developments. Regent Park, Canada's oldest and largest public housing development, is a neighborhood currently undergoing ‘neighborhood revitalization’ based on the social mix model. One tenet of this model is the idea that original public housing residents are benefiting from interactions with middle class residents. Based on qualitative interviews and ethnographic observations with original housing residents as well as new middle–class homeowners, we examine whether cross–class interactions actually occur “on the ground” in Regent Park. By examining an iteration of the model that differs with respect to the direction of resident movement—that is, the revitalization of Regent Park involves more advantaged residents buying into the once low–income neighborhood, as opposed to providing lower–income residents with housing vouchers to move out of the community (and into more affluent neighborhoods across the city)—our study provides a unique contribution to the existing research on social mix. In particular, our research examines whether the direction of this resident movement has any distinct or demonstrable impact on: (1) the daily perceptions, attitudes, and actions of original and new residents, and (2) the nature of cross–class interactions. Second, unlike the vast majority of studies done in Europe and the United States, which are conducted “postrevitalization,” we examine the effects of neighborhood revitalization as the process unfolds.

“Fisher Dynamics” in US Household Debt, 1929–2011

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 214-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. W. Mason ◽  
Arjun Jayadev
Keyword(s):  
Interest Rates ◽  
Public Debt ◽  
Large Fraction ◽  
Supply And Demand ◽  
The United States ◽  
Income Growth ◽  
Household Debt ◽  
Household Credit ◽  
Accounting Terms ◽  
Over Time

The evolution of debt-income ratios over time depends on income growth, inflation, and interest rates, independent of any changes in borrowing. We examine the effect of these “Fisher dynamics” on household debt-income ratios in the United States over the period 1929–2011. Adapting a standard decomposition of public debt to household sector debt, we show that these factors explain, in accounting terms, a large fraction of the changes in household debt-income ratios observed historically. More recently, debt defaults have also been important. Changes in household debt-income ratios over time cannot be straightforwardly interpreted as reflecting shifts in the supply and demand of household credit. (JEL D14, E21, E31, E43, H63, N32)

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