Research Topics

In recent elections, Republicans and Democrats have been competing for the votes of the suburban middle class. The pocketbook issues of the working class have been largely ignored by both parties—this group comprises the true swing voters (voting for Trump in 2016 and 2024 and for Biden in 2020), but their votes are largely protest votes, against incumbents who have not delivered for them. In this policy brief, Institute President Pavlina R. Tcherneva and Senior Scholar L. Randall Wray examine the shifting allegiances of American voters and the types of policies they favor. Tcherneva and Wray are primarily interested in the types of economic policies that would improve the well-being of American working class families and outline some of the economic policies that could win this group over for the next election. As the authors note, while not every “popular” policy is a good policy, good progressive policies are far more popular with the electorate than is typically recognized by either party. 

The motivation to construct the LIMEW in lieu of relying on the official measures of well-being is to provide a more comprehensive measure of economic inequality that will also show the disparities among key demographic groups. The authors of this new working paper show that the LIMEW provides a perspective on disparities among population subgroups that differs from the official measures, as well as differing time trends. For example, according to the LIMEW, there has been an almost continuous improvement in the relative well-being of the elderly, which were 9 percent better off than the nonelderly in 2000 because of greater income from wealth. Moreover, the principle factor behind the increase in inequality over the 1959–2004 period was the rising contribution of income derived from nonhome wealth.