What Gets Measured, Gets Done: Understanding and Addressing Middle‐Class Challenges

Middle‐class families face a range of challenges, including uneven income growth, imposing child care costs, and affordability gaps for higher education. The ideal policies by which policy makers and public administrators can aid the middle class are far from obvious. Policy solutions are likely to...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Public administration review 2019-09, Vol.79 (5), p.768-771
Main Authors: Ely, Todd L., Propheter, Geoffrey, Jones, Rich, Wasserman, Scott
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Administrators
Affordability
Child care
Decentralization
Health care expenditures
Higher education
Meaning
Measurement
Middle class
Policy making
Population policy
Tracking
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Summary:Middle‐class families face a range of challenges, including uneven income growth, imposing child care costs, and affordability gaps for higher education. The ideal policies by which policy makers and public administrators can aid the middle class are far from obvious. Policy solutions are likely to mirror our government and population, meaning that they will be decentralized and varied. Achieving a “growing and thriving middle class” requires understanding the composition of the middle class across the country. Benchmarking and measuring the middle‐class condition at the state and substate levels is critical to crafting and adopting effective policy solutions. This Viewpoint essay highlights the Colorado context to demonstrate the measurement of the middle class and tracking of its lived experiences.
ISSN:0033-3352
1540-6210
DOI:10.1111/puar.13083