IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mes/jeciss/v43y2009i2p327-336.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Measuring Middle Class Economic Security

Author

Listed:
  • Christian Weller
  • Amanda Logan

Abstract

Economic security is the protection from hardship causing economic losses. Such losses can occur due to unemployment, medical emergencies, and other unforeseen events. To measure how well prepared families are for these events, we calculate a series of middle class security indicators, specifically the share of families who have enough financial wealth to weather an unemployment spell, those who can cover a medical emergency, those can handle both unemployment and a medical emergency and those who can sustain an emergency that requires three months of income. Based on data from the Federal Reserve, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, we find that economic security steadily improved in the 1990s, but sharply declined after 2000. Within 2-3 years, all gains of the 1990s were erased due to a debt boom fuelled by weak income growth and sharp price increases.

Suggested Citation

  • Christian Weller & Amanda Logan, 2009. "Measuring Middle Class Economic Security," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(2), pages 327-336.
    • Handle: RePEc:mes:jeciss:v:43:y:2009:i:2:p:327-336
    DOI: 10.2753/JEI0021-3624430205
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.2753/JEI0021-3624430205
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2753/JEI0021-3624430205?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Shari De Baets & Dilek Önkal & Wasim Ahmed, 2022. "Do Risky Scenarios Affect Forecasts of Savings and Expenses?," Forecasting, MDPI, vol. 4(1), pages 1-28, February.
    2. Stefano Di Bucchianico, 2020. "A note on financialization from a Classical-Keynesian standpoint," Department of Economics University of Siena 824, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    3. Hsiu-Fen Lin & Judy L. Postmus & Hongwei Hu & Amanda M. Stylianou, 2023. "IPV Experiences and Financial Strain Over Time: Insights from the Blinder-Oaxaca Decomposition Analysis," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 44(2), pages 434-446, June.
    4. Michal Grinstein-Weiss & Blair D. Russell & William G. Gale & Clinton Key & Dan Ariely, 2017. "Behavioral Interventions to Increase Tax-Time Saving: Evidence from a National Randomized Trial," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(1), pages 3-26, March.
    5. Severin Rapp & Stefan Humer, 2023. "Wealth and Welfare: Do Private and Public Safety Nets Compensate for Asset Poverty?," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 11(1), pages 176-186.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mes:jeciss:v:43:y:2009:i:2:p:327-336. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/MJEI20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.