Many thanks to Heather Boushey and Kavya Vaghul of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth for
updating these figures with 2015 data obtained from the 2014 Current Population Survey Annual Social and
Economic Supplement (dollar values adjusted for inflation using the Consumer Price Index Research Series
available from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). One note: I follow the convention of sometimes referring to
the working class as “blue collar,” although many have pink-collar jobs (as dental hygienists or “the girl” in the
front office of the tire shop) or low-level white-collar jobs (as postal worker, receiving clerk, salesperson of
paper goods to restaurants). The low-level white-collar jobs are gleaned from Michèle Lamont, The Dignity of
Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class, and Immigration (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2000).
Willams and Boushey, “The Three Faces of Work-Family Conflict,” ii. Many thanks to Heather Boushey
and Kavya Vaghul of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth for updating these figures with 2015 data
obtained from the 2014 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (dollar values
adjusted for inflation using the Consumer Price Index Research Series available from the U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics).
Nate Silver, “The Mythology of Trump’s ‘Working Class’ Support,” FiveThirtyEight , May 3, 2016,
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-working-class-support/.
In fact, the median incomes of the Trump primary voters in swing states are close to the $64,000 median
income we found for the missing middle in 2010: Michigan (Trump voters’ median income: $61,000), North
Carolina ($62,000), Ohio ($64,000), and Wisconsin ($69,000). In the primary, relatively wealthier Republicans
mostly voted for Marco Rubio ($88,000) or Dennis Kasich ($91,000). Trump voters’ medians were a little
higher in Florida ($70,000) and Pennsylvania ($71,000). See Nate Silver, “The Mythology of Trump’s ‘Working
Class’ Support,” FiveThirtyEight , May 3, 2016, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-
working-class-support/.
Nate Silver, “Education, Not Income, Predicted Who Would Vote for Trump,” FiveThirtyEight , November
22, 2016, http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/education-not-income-predicted-who-would-vote-for-trump/.
Chapter 3
For a complex answer to this complex topic, see Mark Pauly, Adam Leive, and Scott Harrington, “The Price
of Responsibility: The Impact of Health Reform on Non-Poor Uninsureds,” NBER Working Paper 21565
(2015).
Joan C. Williams and Heather Boushey, “The Three Faces of Work-Family Conflict: The Poor, the
Professionals, and the Missing Middle,” Center for American Progress (2010): 9,
https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/issues/2010/01/pdf/threefaces.pdf.
Other books that get at this problem are Joseph T. Howell, Hard Living on Clay Street: Portraits of Blue
Collar Families (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 1972); and Maria J. Kefalas, Working-Class Heroes:
Protecting Home, Community, and Nation in a Chicago Neighborhood (Oakland, CA: University of California
Press, 2003).
J. D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (New York: Harper, 2016).
Lillian B. Rubin, Families on the Fault Line: America’s Working Class Speaks About the Family, the
Economy, Race, and Ethnicity (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), 94, 96–97.
Notes