Toby Young Toby Young

Why the squeezed middle are poorer than their parents

issue 09 March 2019

It won’t be news to readers of The Spectator that one of the long-term effects of globalisation is the hollowing out of the middle class. In a study of wage growth in ten advanced economies published a few years ago, the Resolution Foundation found that median pay lagged behind growth in GDP, with the gap between the middle class and the highest-paid growing and the gap between them and the lowest-paid shrinking.

The phenomenon is particularly pronounced in the US. There, the top 10 per cent of income earners have seen their share of national income increase since the 2007-08 recession, while the remaining 90 per cent have seen their share fall, with middle-income groups hit the hardest.

This trend was all too apparent in the Austrian ski resort where Caroline and I spent last weekend thanks to the hospitality of a generous friend.

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