California Dream Project: Despite state’s immense wealth, middle class in decline

By Amita Sharma, KPBS
California’s lush coastline, balmy climate and post World War II economic promise made it an easy sell as America’s middle class paradise in the 1950s.

“The California Dream of two or three generations ago was, `I’m going to move from a place that’s cold and flat to a place where there’s lots of opportunity,’” said Joel Kotkin, a presidential fellow in Urban Futures at  Chapman University in Orange. “`I’ll get a job in an aerospace factory, in an oil company. I’ll buy a house with a pool. I’ll die and go to heaven. And I’ll do it all in good weather.’”

Today the weather remains. But access to the California dream is being choked off.

Stratospheric housing costs, the exit of key companies and the failure to replace the jobs that left with them have downsized the state’s middle class.

Since 1970, California’s share of the middle class fell from 60 percent to just over half the population. That trend almost mirrors patterns across the country. The number of middle-income Americans slipped from 61 percent in 1971 to 50 percent in 2015, according to the Pew Research Center.

In California, some have risen to the upper class and others have slid down. And some have left the state.

“The key group leaving is basically in their 30s, 40s and 50s tending to be making about $100,000 to $200,000 a year,” Kotkin said, citing Internal Revenue Service data.

Between 2007 and 2016, California lost 1 million more domestic residents than have come into the state, according to the IRS. Many are moving to Texas, Arizona, Nevada and Oregon.

“California opened their doors and basically kicked us out,” Kelly Rudiger said. “We couldn’t afford to live there with almost half of our income paying for our housing, our property taxes, our utilities so my husband and I both being full-time employees, we could keep up but we could never get ahead.”

Rudiger and her husband, Tony, moved their two children to Texas last year.

“We sold an 1,800 square-foot home in San Diego and now live in a 4,000 square-foot home and are still paying less on our mortgage,” Rudiger said.

She said her middle class income goes a lot further in Texas than in California.

The Public Policy Institute of California classifies middle income earners  as those making between $49,716 and $174,006 based on 2017 calculations.

Kotkin said California families used to pay three times their income for a home in 1970. Sometime over the next decade, it changed and now that figure has jumped to as high as 10 times. - Read More, OCRegister

California Dream Project: Despite state’s immense wealth, middle class in decline

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