Hourglass Economy National Conference

Economic Inequality and the Hourglass Economy:
The Decline of the Middle Class—The End of the American Dream?

	In the News

		Middle Class Crunch 'Real' Median Income is Falling Aired April 10, 2008 at 13:17
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		Growing Income Gap Supper-rich Widening the Gap Aired April 21, 2008 at 8:31
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	The compact in American society has always been hard work in return for achieving the American dream. The rise of an hourglass economy, however, results in a system whereby no amount of hard work facilitates social mobility and economic parity, and low-wage workers are in danger of becoming a permanent underclass. Therefore, as we face a new high technology, service economy replacing an industrial economy, we are also facing the possible rise of a permanently bifurcated labor force characterized by extreme economic inequality with a shrunken middle class. Should this new structure replace the classic American ideal of an egalitarian middle class society, we will need to think not only of the economic, but also of the political and social consequences. For two decades or more sociologists, economists and public intellectuals have been amassing a body of data documenting the increase in economic inequality in this country. The preponderance and pervasiveness of evidence has tilted the interpretation in favor of concluding a marked increase in economic inequality, if not an extreme increase. Inequality, however, is not a cause; it is a consequence. The critical issue/debate consists in whether the “forces” producing economic inequality are 1) socio-politically driven and able to be corrected by countervailing sociopolitical actions or 2) structural characteristics inherent in the new high technology service economy and immune to social or political interests bent on promoting less economic divergence.

Dr. John Koval
Egan Urban Center, DePaul University
990 W. Fullerton Ave., Suite 3100
Chicago, IL 60614

Phone: (773) 325-4434
Fax : (773) 325-4923
E-mail: jkoval@depaul.edu