The Decline of the White Working Class and the Rise of a Mass Upper-Middle Class

Income Inequality and Partisan Voting in the United States*

“…Abramowitz and Teixeira (2008) have written of “the rise of a mass upper middle class,” and this is what we are seeing in Figure 5. Whether you call it red and blue America, or soccer moms versus SUV dads, it is a geographic component to the culture war that was not occurring in the days of Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon, or even in the era of Phyllis Schlafly and Ronald Reagan.…”

Liberals, Labor, and Party Government

“…This decision about classification excludes better paid members of the traditional working class while including students, recent college graduates, homemakers, the retired, and the disabled. 56 When other understandings (involving education, occupation, and self-identification) of the white working class are adopted, then there is much greater evidence that cultural and other factors have displaced voting according to economic class. Using a broader definition of class, Alan Abramowitz and Ruy Teixeira argue that "there has been a dramatic decline in support for the Democratic Party" among both lower -and middle-class white voters.…”

Interest Groups Vie for Public Support

“…Their strategy, aimed at winning White votes, had a historical foundation. Scholars have argued that the progressive policies that originated in the 1960s, including affirmative action, have pushed male voters and White voters from the Democratic toward the Republican Party (Abramowitz & Teixeira, 2008;Edsall & Edsall, 1991;Rhoads, Saenz, & Carducci, 2005)-the so-called Reagan Democrats.…”