In his State of the Union address on January 20, President Obama introduced the idea of “middle-class economics.” Recounting the story of the Erlers, a Minneapolis family struggling to pay off student loans and recover from a stint of unemployment, Obama stressed the need to “restore the link between hard work and growing opportunity for every American.” Middle-class economics would entail more aid for working families such as a higher minimum wage, quality child care, access to higher education, and paid sick leave. These policies, he concluded, would support “the idea that this country does best when everyone gets their fair shot, everyone does their fair share, everyone plays by the same set of rules.”

A new article in the New York Times confirms that America’s middle class has, indeed, been floundering. Though most Americans continue to identify as middle class—and 60% of those believe that it is still possible for them to become rich—incomes have stagnated, leaving more and more families struggling to get by. The Times article cites RSF trustee Lawrence Katz, who observed that while those at the top of the income ladder have benefited from the economy’s slow recovery from the Great Recession, most middle-class workers have seen few economic gains. He noted, “You’ve got an iPhone now and a better TV, but your median income hasn’t changed. What’s really changed is the penthouse has become supernice.”

The erosion of the once-stable middle of America is also the subject of Labor’s Love Lost: The Decline and Fall of the Working Class Family in America, a new RSF book by Andrew Cherlin, which has been widely covered in the media, including articles in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report, the Guardian, the Atlantic, Time, the Nation, the Economist and the New Republic. Cherlin also appeared on Dissent magazine’s Belabored podcast to explain the growing “marriage gap” between high school-educated young adults and their more affluent, college-educated peers. Facing insecure economic prospects, less-educated young adults are increasingly forgoing marriage and are having children within unstable cohabiting relationships. “The problem is not that the 1950s family has declined,” said Cherlin. “The problem is that for people without college degrees, nothing stable has replaced it.” He recommended stronger social safety net policies, including the “middle-class economics” measures mentioned by Obama in his State of the Union address. As Cherlin put it, “There are many proposals that would help both married couples and single parents.”

One of Obama’s proposals was a plan to expand paid sick leave. Promising to both help states adopt paid sick leave polices and approve a bill legislating national paid sick leave, Obama noted, “Today, we are the only advanced country on Earth that doesn’t guarantee paid sick leave or paid maternity leave to our workers.“ In the 2014 RSF book What Works for Workers?, contributors Ruth Milkman and Eileen Appelbaum emphasize the necessity of paid sick leave for workers. Their chapter, “Low-Wage Workers and Paid Family Leave: The California Experience,” analyzes California’s paid family leave program, a policy designed to benefit the working poor, who have few resources that allow them to take time off work to care for children or ill family members. Milkman and Appelbaum found that despite initial opposition, the paid leave program proved more acceptable than expected among employers and provided a much-needed system of wage replacement for low-income workers. In the wake of its success, the initiative has emerged as a useful blueprint for paid leave programs in other states.

Dan Clawson and Naomi Gerstel, co-authors of the RSF book Unequal Time, also recently discussed sick leave in an op-ed for MSNBC. In their study of how doctors, nurses, EMTs, and nursing assistants experience schedule unpredictability at the workplace, they found that when sick leave and vacation time were combined in “earned time off” policies, parents (and especially women) were often left with little to no vacation after using their time off to care for family. By contrast, those who were afforded the most vacation time in Clawson and Gerstel’s study were affluent male doctors. Vacation time, the authors concluded, may quickly become “another part of the growing wealth divide.”

Child care is yet another resource that has become increasingly difficult for low-income parents to obtain. As Obama noted in his address, “In today’s economy, when having both parents in the workforce is an economic necessity for many families, we need affordable, high-quality child care more than ever.” Research presented in RSF book The Long Shadow supports this claim, showing that early-life opportunities for children play a significant role in determining their life outcomes. In their study, authors Karl Alexander, Doris Entwisle, and Linda Olsen tracked the life progress of a group of almost 800 predominantly low-income Baltimore school children. They confirmed that children who were born poor tended to stay that way, and that education alone—long believed to be the ticket out of poverty—was more likely to enhance the privileges of those who were already affluent, rather than lifting up poor children. As Alexander wrote a 2014 op-ed, “While universal access to preschool is essential, we must remember there is no silver bullet.”

In other words, reinvigorating the middle class will be no easy task, and will require a comprehensive set of reforms. Obama’s program of “middle-class economics”—which also includes tax credits for families with children, raising the minimum wage, and free community college—could potentially provide a much-needed boost to the struggling middle of America.

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