Metro Atlanta’s middle class is shrinking faster than the Braves’ chances of winning the pennant.
OK, that’s an exaggeration. But there’s no question that our region’s middle class is being gradually hollowed out, so gradually that it is easy to go unnoticed. But gauged over time, the trend is crystal clear.
Over the past 15 years, according to Census Bureau data, the percentage of upper- and especially middle-income households in the Atlanta metro region has declined significantly, with an offsetting increase in the percentage of low-income households. That’s a national phenomenon, but it has hit our own region particularly hard.
How hard? According to a study released this month by the Pew Research Group, the only major metro region to experience a steeper decline in its middle class was Detroit. Other data tell the same story. Median household income in the Atlanta-Roswell-Sandy Springs metro area fell by $14,359, from $83,531 in 1999 to $69,136 in 2014, adjusted for inflation.
Think about that. That’s $14,000 less per household, per year. Again, the only major metro area with a faster decline was Detroit, with a drop of $14,449.
Statewide numbers are just as bad. Between 1999 and 2014, median household income in Georgia fell by $10,700, a decline again exceeded only by Michigan. In 1999, we ranked 15th in median income. By 2014, we had fallen to 33rd. So when state leaders bemoan the growth of food stamp enrollment in recent years, snidely attributing it to constituents who “have turned the safety net into a hammock,” they ought to look at actual data before stooping to such condescension.
In fact, according to a new study by the University of California, some 49 percent of Georgians working in manufacturing are paid so poorly that they have to rely on the public safety net to make ends meet. The only state with a worse rate is Mississippi.
This should not be happening. We’re a SunBelt metro area, not a northern city frozen over for a good part of the year. We’re a metro region deeply integrated into the global economy, not a city gutted by the collapse of manufacturing jobs. But you couldn’t tell it from the economic trends.
Now, one way to reverse such trends would be to invest in education. At every level — individual, regional, state and national — the best way to increase earning power, economic stability and quality of life is through education. Our elected leaders constantly preach that refrain, and they’re right to do so.
But what they preach and what they do are two different things.
Georgia leaders have cut so much from higher education over the past decade — and offset it with tuition increases — that we are one of just seven states to have raised tuition by 60 percent or more since 2007-08, according to the Center for Budget Priorities in Washington. Overall, Georgia has slashed per-student support for higher education by 20 percent, and as tuition has soared the HOPE scholarship program has been whittled back, compounding the problem.
Our leaders remain fixated on cutting taxes, under the theory that reducing the cost of doing business will lead to more business. Setting aside the wisdom of that theory for a moment, doesn’t that same dynamic play out in higher education? If you raise the price of something by 60 percent, aren’t you going to get a lot less of it?
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