Far More Americans Now See Their Country as Sharply Divided Along Economic Lines
by Jodie T. Allen, Senior Editor, Pew Research Center and Michael Dimock, Associate Director for Research, Pew Research Center for the People & the Press:
Over the past two decades, a growing share of the public has come to the view that American society is divided into two groups, the "haves" and the "have-nots." Today, Americans are split evenly on the two-class question with as many saying the country is divided along economic lines as say this is not the case (48% each). In sharp contrast, in 1988, 71% rejected this notion, while just 26% saw a divided nation.
Of equal importance, the number of Americans who see themselves among the "have-nots" of society has doubled over the past two decades, from 17% in 1988 to 34% today. In 1988, far more Americans said that, if they had to choose, they probably were among the "haves" (59%) than the "have-nots" (17%). Today, this gap is far narrower (45% "haves" vs. 34% "have-nots").
These shifting attitudes have occurred gradually over the past two decades, although the perception of personal financial stringency appears to have risen more rapidly in recent years. As recently as 2001, a 52%-majority still viewed themselves as resting on the positive side of the economic balance, compared with 32% who felt they were monetarily in need. Since then the number of self-described "haves" has fallen by seven percentage points, a decline as large as that which occurred over the previous 13 years.
The share of Americans who see the country as divided along economic lines has also continued to tick upward, though at a somewhat slower rate in recent years (Have/have-not perceptions rose by 18 points over the 13 years between 1988 and 2001 compared with a rise of four points over the last six years).
The increased prevalence of both views -- that the country is increasingly divided along economic lines and that a given individual is on the wrong side of that divide -- finds support in national economic data. As numerous studies have demonstrated in recent years, income gains over the last few decades have been heavily concentrated at the very top of the income distribution. For example, in an update of their earlier study of long-term U.S. income trends,1 economists Piketty and Saez compute that the share of income going to families in the top 1% of the income scale has doubled from 8% in 1980 to 16% in 2004 even excluding capital gains.2 (For a review of other recent studies see an earlier Pew commentary, "Pinched Pocketbooks: Do Average Americans Spot Something That Most Economists Miss?"3)
Meanwhile, Congressional Budget Office data4 show that despite the increase in the number of families with two or more earners and widespread income gains in the latter half of the 1990s, families in the middle fifth of the income distribution realized only a modest $6,600 increase in annual income between 1988 and 2004, while the top 1% of families saw their incomes rise from $839,100 to an average $1,259,700. Recently released Census Bureau data show that in 2006, median household income adjusted for inflation was still 2.1% below its 1999 level.5 More sensationally, Bloomberg.com recently reported on a study showing that "top private-equity and hedge fund managers made more in 10 minutes than average-paid U.S. workers earned all of last year."6
Factors Driving Perceptions of an Economic Divide & rest of article @ following link:
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/593/haves-have-nots
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