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Published on Sunday, Sep 30, 2007
This is the story of an American family three generations, in fact.
It's a tale spanning more than five decades. But the ending hasn't been written yet.
Don't expect a photo album of snapshots. There aren't any cameras in the world where this family is found. That's because its members exist only in the millions of records of data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau.
But these people are as real as the individuals who dutifully answer the scores of questions on census forms.
The answers to those questions, taken together, paint a portrait that mirrors the typical family, as found in the census data. In terms of economic well-being, the details of this particular family are drawn from the most common answers to those questions.
They are the heart of the middle class.
Robert was born in 1924. He grew up during the Great Depression and, at 18, went off to fight in World War II.
When he returned, he married his high school sweetheart, Mary, and looked forward to settling down for the first time in his life.
It was time to start a family.
Robert Jr. the first of their four children was born in 1947.
Robert had thought about going to college on the GI Bill but decided he didn't need to. He had a job at a machine tool factory that supplied a nearby auto plant that used to make the Sherman tanks he drove in France.
The pay was good it was a union shop. When he filled out the 1950 census form, he put down that he had earned $3,050 the year before as a lathe operator. That may not sound like much today, but adjusted for inflation, that's the equivalent of $22,081 in 2006 dollars.
Better yet, the necessities of life and some of the luxuries that were rapidly becoming necessities were equally affordable.
The average price of a new home was $8,450 less than three times his annual income. And, like all World War II veterans there were 18 million of them Robert was eligible for a low-interest, government-backed mortgage.
He also could afford a car. The average price of a new 1950 model was $1,510.
Of course prices went up as the years passed, but Robert's pay at the plant was more than keeping up. By 1959, his income had nearly doubled, to $6,050. During the same 10 years, the price of an average new car rose to $2,220 only a 47 percent increase.
Factoring in inflation, Robert's earnings were equivalent to nearly $36,000 today an increase in real buying power of more than 62 percent compared with a decade earlier.
He needed the income to support his growing family. After Robert Jr., Mary had three more children, a boy and two girls.
First in college
While neither Robert nor Mary had a college education, they made sure their children had that opportunity.
After all, it wasn't a tremendous financial burden on the family. When Robert Jr. went off to college in 1965, his father helped find him a summer job at a nearby Ford plant.
Not that Robert Jr. needed much help. Ford, like the other Big Three automakers, had a program that recruited college students. Everyone won: The automakers got young, enthusiastic part-timers, while the regular workers got to take vacation time when they wanted during the summer months.
Robert Jr. got the money he needed for college. The summer after graduating high school, he earned more than $2,000 at the auto plant. That was more than the annual tuition at the small, private college he attended.
A $50-a-month allowance from his parents, a couple hundred dollars in grants and scholarships covered the remainder of dormitory room and board.
Robert Jr.'s two sisters followed the same path. Although they needed more financial help the big paycheck at the auto plant wasn't an option for them their parents managed fairly easily.
But Robert Jr.'s brother, Gary, chose not to go to college. Gary liked working with machines and started right out of high school at the same plant where his father worked.
Robert's pay continued to keep pace with increased costs. His wage didn't double during the 1960s the way it had in the previous decade. But it did go up by half again to $9,350 by 1969. Adjusted for inflation, that would be the equivalent of $44,439 today.
Inflation's toll
By the early 1970s, however, the economic engine that had propelled Robert's prosperity since he came home from the war was running out of steam. Plants were closing and the phrase ''rust belt'' had entered the vocabulary.
Thanks to his seniority, Robert managed to keep working. His pay kept going up with his seniority. But the voracious inflation in the 1970s the consumer price index went up nearly 84 percent from 1969 to 1979 ate away most of the gains. His pay in 1979, adjusted to today's dollars, was only $48,673 up less than 10 percent in a decade.
Still, Robert and Mary couldn't complain.
Robert turned 56 in 1980 and looked forward to retiring in a few years his union contract provided for a decent pension, including health insurance, after 30 years of service.
Their home was paid for; their children were now adults.
It had been a good run.
Life also was looking good for their children certainly the ones with college degrees.
Robert Jr. met Linda at college and got married the summer before their senior year. They had twins, Lisa and Michael, in 1969, the year they graduated.
Robert Jr. climbed onto the first rung of the corporate ladder. He had majored in history, but what he studied didn't matter to the insurance company that hired him. The degree was the important thing.
His pay had more than tripled since starting with the company, reaching $20,505 in 1979. Even when factoring in inflation, that represented an increase of more than two-thirds in buying power, to $53,073.
Worrisome costs
Despite the bigger paycheck, Robert Jr. and Linda felt some apprehension. As fast as his pay had increased, so had the cost of living.
Robert Jr. and Linda had delayed buying a home because junior executives with the insurance company could expect to move early in their careers.
By the time they bought their first home, in 1979, the price was $58,500.
Robert Jr. could certainly handle the payments on a 30-year mortgage. But it bothered him to remember his parents had managed a 20-year loan.
Of course, Robert Jr. and Linda's home was bigger and in a more upscale neighborhood. But that new neighborhood was in a suburb where everything seemed beyond walking distance. That meant a second car, and the average price of a new model was up to nearly $6,000.
Those were some of the factors that went into the couple's decision not to have any more children. Fewer children meant more resources to devote to each one. An added benefit was that Linda saw herself as free to enter the work force. That happened just when the family needed it the most when Michael and Lisa started college.
Entering the work force
By 1989, when the twins were sophomores, Linda already had been back at work for a couple of years starting as a legal secretary in a law firm and now heading up the clerical department. Her pay was $27,690 only about 62 cents for every dollar her husband earned even though they had the same college degrees.
Combined, the two incomes together totaled more than $72,000 the equivalent of more than $114,000 in 2006 dollars.
The problem was that the cost of a college education like home prices had gone up faster than their income.
In 1970, the year after Robert Jr. and Linda graduated, the tuition at their college was about $2,000 a year. In 1986, it was $8,120. Even after adjusting for inflation, the cost had jumped more than half.
Their high family income also disqualified them for financial aid. The choice to fund their children's education was borrowing or going to a cheaper state school. They chose the latter.
That they had to make the choice frustrated and confused Robert Jr. and Linda. After all, they were making good money. Why was it financially harder to send their children to the same private university they had attended?
At least their children were going to college.
A widening gap
Robert Jr.'s brother and fellow baby boomer, Gary, was having a tougher time.
For a few years after starting at his father's plant, Gary seemed to be following the same path of prosperity. By 1979, he was earning about $15,000 a year about $5,000 less than his older, college-educated brother, but not bad. Adjusted for inflation, Gary was taking home the equivalent of $37,802 a year.
But during the next decade, the earning gap between the brothers widened. Factoring in inflation, Gary's pay went up less than 10 percent from 1979 to 1989. Brother Robert Jr.'s earnings increased by more than a third during the same decade.
Worse yet, Gary's job wasn't generating the surplus dollars needed to pay for his three children's education even at less expensive state schools. Gary's oldest daughter, Emily, chose to borrow and graduated with a degree in telecommunications and about $20,000 in debt.
His younger daughter, Cindy, avoided loans by staying home and getting an associate degree at the nearby community college, which qualified her for a job as a dental hygienist.
Downsizing, outsourcing
The high cost of college wasn't a problem for Gary's son, Mark. He didn't want to go. Like his father and grandfather, he loved to work with machines. He wanted a job in the plant.
But the plant didn't need him. He settled for a job installing tires at the local Wal-Mart, making about $10 an hour about 20 percent less than his father's starting pay.
By 2000, the plant didn't need Gary either.
After downsizing and automating in the 1990s, the plant managed to stay profitable by cutting costs and increasing productivity. But the plant shut its doors for good after the local auto plant that was its most important customer closed in 2001.
Gary was hardly out on the streets. His union contract provided a decent severance package that paid the bills until he found work at another plant. He took a pay cut, but not a big one about 5 percent. But he was also paying much more for health care on the new job.
For Gary, the more important question was what would happen to his children.
How would they maintain the lifestyle of their parents?
It's a question Gary's parents, Robert and Mary, never had to ask.
David Knox can be reached at 330-996-3532 or dknox@thebeaconjournal.com
Middle class hanging by thread as rich get richer, poor get poorer
Meet the family: Census data form American portrait
Today's story about a middle-class family is unusual for us
The very things that define the middle class slipping out of reach for many Ohioans
Story behind the story: five decades of data
Speaking of... Voices from The American Dream series
Median annual pay in the U.S. over the decades (pdf)
This is the story of an American family three generations, in fact.
It's a tale spanning more than five decades. But the ending hasn't been written yet.
Don't expect a photo album of snapshots. There aren't any cameras in the world where this family is found. That's because its members exist only in the millions of records of data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau.
But these people are as real as the individuals who dutifully answer the scores of questions on census forms.
The answers to those questions, taken together, paint a portrait that mirrors the typical family, as found in the census data. In terms of economic well-being, the details of this particular family are drawn from the most common answers to those questions.
They are the heart of the middle class.
Robert was born in 1924. He grew up during the Great Depression and, at 18, went off to fight in World War II.
When he returned, he married his high school sweetheart, Mary, and looked forward to settling down for the first time in his life.
It was time to start a family.
Robert Jr. the first of their four children was born in 1947.
Robert had thought about going to college on the GI Bill but decided he didn't need to. He had a job at a machine tool factory that supplied a nearby auto plant that used to make the Sherman tanks he drove in France.
The pay was good it was a union shop. When he filled out the 1950 census form, he put down that he had earned $3,050 the year before as a lathe operator. That may not sound like much today, but adjusted for inflation, that's the equivalent of $22,081 in 2006 dollars.
Better yet, the necessities of life and some of the luxuries that were rapidly becoming necessities were equally affordable.
The average price of a new home was $8,450 less than three times his annual income. And, like all World War II veterans there were 18 million of them Robert was eligible for a low-interest, government-backed mortgage.
He also could afford a car. The average price of a new 1950 model was $1,510.
Of course prices went up as the years passed, but Robert's pay at the plant was more than keeping up. By 1959, his income had nearly doubled, to $6,050. During the same 10 years, the price of an average new car rose to $2,220 only a 47 percent increase.
Factoring in inflation, Robert's earnings were equivalent to nearly $36,000 today an increase in real buying power of more than 62 percent compared with a decade earlier.
He needed the income to support his growing family. After Robert Jr., Mary had three more children, a boy and two girls.
First in college
While neither Robert nor Mary had a college education, they made sure their children had that opportunity.
After all, it wasn't a tremendous financial burden on the family. When Robert Jr. went off to college in 1965, his father helped find him a summer job at a nearby Ford plant.
Not that Robert Jr. needed much help. Ford, like the other Big Three automakers, had a program that recruited college students. Everyone won: The automakers got young, enthusiastic part-timers, while the regular workers got to take vacation time when they wanted during the summer months.
Robert Jr. got the money he needed for college. The summer after graduating high school, he earned more than $2,000 at the auto plant. That was more than the annual tuition at the small, private college he attended.
A $50-a-month allowance from his parents, a couple hundred dollars in grants and scholarships covered the remainder of dormitory room and board.
Robert Jr.'s two sisters followed the same path. Although they needed more financial help the big paycheck at the auto plant wasn't an option for them their parents managed fairly easily.
But Robert Jr.'s brother, Gary, chose not to go to college. Gary liked working with machines and started right out of high school at the same plant where his father worked.
Robert's pay continued to keep pace with increased costs. His wage didn't double during the 1960s the way it had in the previous decade. But it did go up by half again to $9,350 by 1969. Adjusted for inflation, that would be the equivalent of $44,439 today.
Inflation's toll
By the early 1970s, however, the economic engine that had propelled Robert's prosperity since he came home from the war was running out of steam. Plants were closing and the phrase ''rust belt'' had entered the vocabulary.
Thanks to his seniority, Robert managed to keep working. His pay kept going up with his seniority. But the voracious inflation in the 1970s the consumer price index went up nearly 84 percent from 1969 to 1979 ate away most of the gains. His pay in 1979, adjusted to today's dollars, was only $48,673 up less than 10 percent in a decade.
Still, Robert and Mary couldn't complain.
Robert turned 56 in 1980 and looked forward to retiring in a few years his union contract provided for a decent pension, including health insurance, after 30 years of service.
Their home was paid for; their children were now adults.
It had been a good run.
Life also was looking good for their children certainly the ones with college degrees.
Robert Jr. met Linda at college and got married the summer before their senior year. They had twins, Lisa and Michael, in 1969, the year they graduated.
Robert Jr. climbed onto the first rung of the corporate ladder. He had majored in history, but what he studied didn't matter to the insurance company that hired him. The degree was the important thing.
His pay had more than tripled since starting with the company, reaching $20,505 in 1979. Even when factoring in inflation, that represented an increase of more than two-thirds in buying power, to $53,073.
Worrisome costs
Despite the bigger paycheck, Robert Jr. and Linda felt some apprehension. As fast as his pay had increased, so had the cost of living.
Robert Jr. and Linda had delayed buying a home because junior executives with the insurance company could expect to move early in their careers.
By the time they bought their first home, in 1979, the price was $58,500.
Robert Jr. could certainly handle the payments on a 30-year mortgage. But it bothered him to remember his parents had managed a 20-year loan.
Of course, Robert Jr. and Linda's home was bigger and in a more upscale neighborhood. But that new neighborhood was in a suburb where everything seemed beyond walking distance. That meant a second car, and the average price of a new model was up to nearly $6,000.
Those were some of the factors that went into the couple's decision not to have any more children. Fewer children meant more resources to devote to each one. An added benefit was that Linda saw herself as free to enter the work force. That happened just when the family needed it the most when Michael and Lisa started college.
Entering the work force
By 1989, when the twins were sophomores, Linda already had been back at work for a couple of years starting as a legal secretary in a law firm and now heading up the clerical department. Her pay was $27,690 only about 62 cents for every dollar her husband earned even though they had the same college degrees.
Combined, the two incomes together totaled more than $72,000 the equivalent of more than $114,000 in 2006 dollars.
The problem was that the cost of a college education like home prices had gone up faster than their income.
In 1970, the year after Robert Jr. and Linda graduated, the tuition at their college was about $2,000 a year. In 1986, it was $8,120. Even after adjusting for inflation, the cost had jumped more than half.
Their high family income also disqualified them for financial aid. The choice to fund their children's education was borrowing or going to a cheaper state school. They chose the latter.
That they had to make the choice frustrated and confused Robert Jr. and Linda. After all, they were making good money. Why was it financially harder to send their children to the same private university they had attended?
At least their children were going to college.
A widening gap
Robert Jr.'s brother and fellow baby boomer, Gary, was having a tougher time.
For a few years after starting at his father's plant, Gary seemed to be following the same path of prosperity. By 1979, he was earning about $15,000 a year about $5,000 less than his older, college-educated brother, but not bad. Adjusted for inflation, Gary was taking home the equivalent of $37,802 a year.
But during the next decade, the earning gap between the brothers widened. Factoring in inflation, Gary's pay went up less than 10 percent from 1979 to 1989. Brother Robert Jr.'s earnings increased by more than a third during the same decade.
Worse yet, Gary's job wasn't generating the surplus dollars needed to pay for his three children's education even at less expensive state schools. Gary's oldest daughter, Emily, chose to borrow and graduated with a degree in telecommunications and about $20,000 in debt.
His younger daughter, Cindy, avoided loans by staying home and getting an associate degree at the nearby community college, which qualified her for a job as a dental hygienist.
Downsizing, outsourcing
The high cost of college wasn't a problem for Gary's son, Mark. He didn't want to go. Like his father and grandfather, he loved to work with machines. He wanted a job in the plant.
But the plant didn't need him. He settled for a job installing tires at the local Wal-Mart, making about $10 an hour about 20 percent less than his father's starting pay.
By 2000, the plant didn't need Gary either.
After downsizing and automating in the 1990s, the plant managed to stay profitable by cutting costs and increasing productivity. But the plant shut its doors for good after the local auto plant that was its most important customer closed in 2001.
Gary was hardly out on the streets. His union contract provided a decent severance package that paid the bills until he found work at another plant. He took a pay cut, but not a big one about 5 percent. But he was also paying much more for health care on the new job.
For Gary, the more important question was what would happen to his children.
How would they maintain the lifestyle of their parents?
It's a question Gary's parents, Robert and Mary, never had to ask.
David Knox can be reached at 330-996-3532 or dknox@thebeaconjournal.com
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