Word: medians
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...others acquire wealth, it has been shrinking. Economic consultant and investment adviser Gary Shilling calculates that the group made up of households earning from $20,000 to $60,000 a year in inflation-adjusted 1985 dollars has dwindled from 53% of the nation in 1973 to 49% in 1985. Median family income is about $30,850, almost exactly what it was 15 years ago when inflation is factored in. But even that may overstate the fortunes of the middle class, whose living standards have gone down in several ways...
Education: Saving to send even one child to college puts millions of middle- class parents on an ever accelerating treadmill. According to the Senate education subcommittee, the full annual costs at a private college come to $12,924 a student. That represents 40% or so of a median family's total income. Parents who send a son or daughter to a public college can expect to pay $5,823 this year, or almost 20% of median-family income. Many parents have two or more children in college at the same time, and the Reagan Administration has made student loans harder...
...heart of the story are runaway real estate prices and a younger generation that was unable to climb aboard before housing became so hard to afford. It would cost Peggy almost $38,000 for a down payment on a median- price house in Los Angeles, something she could not manage at her present savings rate for about 40 years. As it is, she pays $500 a month in rent, almost three times as much as her father's initial mortgage payments...
...week after taxes. (The withholding includes $32 a week in Social Security tax that will help pay for father Bob's retirement, a curious transfer of income.) Roughly two-thirds of that goes to rent, household and car expenses. She is unable to afford a private phone. With a median-price house in the area now at $188,000, she does not dream of owning...
...yellow journalism. It soon won a reputation for thoughtful, analytical coverage of foreign events. In the 1970s, however, its readership began to dwindle. Worldwide circulation last year was 176,000 -- up from a 1982 low of 144,000 but still small for a national daily. Worse, the median age of its readers is a mature 58. The paper last turned a profit in 1961; this year's losses are expected to total $15 million...