The degree divide haunting American marriage.
The Great Decompression is the divergence in income growth experienced by the middle class and the upper-middle class in recent decades. Real incomes have risen for median earners and middle-class families, but, amid skill-biased technological change, real incomes have risen much faster for the professionals who compose the upper-middle class.
Exacerbating the Great Decompression is assortative marriage. High-earning professionals increasingly form couples whose combined incomes far outstrip the average family's. The upper middle class has not just stayed one step ahead, but has widened the socioeconomic gap. Much ink has been spilled analyzing the success of the top 1 percent and top 0.1 percent, but a broader upper-middle class of working professionals has been very successful, too. And it is this class against which the middle class compares itself.
The degree divide haunting American marriage.
Affordability isn't one thing, it's many — and the city's biggest problem is the flight of families.
Even as manufacturing jobs decline, Alaska offers lucrative work for men without college degrees.
As the US economy has become evermore skill-biased, the far right end of the distribution has galloped ahead.
Why economic geography matters for families.
Households with two educated income earners become far wealthier than those with single incomes.
With the Great Decompression, incomes rise for everyone but much faster for the affluent.
The big city cost-of-living crunch is a legitimate source of discontent.