The Equity Factor

Philadelphia’s Middle Class Shrank By 17 Percent Between 1970 and 2010

New research from Pew Charitable Trusts shows just how much Philly’s middle class has shrunk since the 1970s.

A view of Center City from North Philadelphia. Credit: Flickr user zpeckler

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We all know that the middle class is shrinking. It’s the focus of every political argument that isn’t about drones. But new research from the Pew Charitable Trusts shows just how precipitous of a decline Philadelphia’s middle class has seen in the wake of deindustrialization.

The numbers are staggering. In 1970, middle-class adults accounted for 59 percent of the city’s population. As you can see in the graph below, that number dropped to 42 percent by 2010. Over the same period, the low-income percentage of population jumped from 30 percent to 47 percent. Philadelphia, the data shows, got poorer. Its upper class, in the meantime, only saw a small uptick of 1 percent, no pun intended.

Compared to the rest of the country during the study period, the Philadelphia region lost more of its middle-class tax base.

Over that same period of time, the demographics within Philly’s middle class also changed drastically. In 1970, 74 percent of the city’s middle class was white and 26 percent was black. By 2010 that number had shifted to 42 percent black and 54 percent white. (Asian and Hispanic numbers are not shown because they are counted separately. In the most recent tally, Asians and mixed-race residents accounted for 4 percent of the city’s middle class.)

It’s worth mentioning that although the middle class shrank, the earnings of those squarely in the middle class rose. “Over that period, the median income for Philadelphia households that fell into the middle-class range, as we defined it, rose from $57,711 to $67,430 in 2010 dollars,” reads the Pew report. “An increase of nearly 17 percent.”

Of course, Philadelphia’s eroding middle class isn’t its own unique sob story. At 43 percent, its middle class is similar in size to the majority of American cities: Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Pittsburgh. But while Philly may have a similarly sized middle class, its lower class is nearly 10 percent higher than that of New York and Los Angeles and closer to Detroit and Baltimore.

The Equity Factor is made possible with the support of the Surdna Foundation.

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Bill Bradley is a writer and reporter living in Brooklyn. His work has appeared in Deadspin, GQ, and Vanity Fair, among others.

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Tags: philadelphiajobsequity factor

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