Canada's Wage-Earning Wives and the Construction of the Middle Class, 1945-60

1994 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Veronica Strong-Boag
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Wage Earning

Six Decades of U.S. Tax Reform: Why has the Average Couple’s Tax Burden Increased?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
James M. Plecnik ◽  
Shan Wang
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Tax Burden ◽  
Median Income ◽  
Tax Rates ◽  
Effective Tax Rates ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Payroll Taxes ◽  
Wage Earning ◽  
Wage Earners

We collect basic Federal tax laws over a 64-year period in order to simulate the historical effective tax rates of median income wage-earning couples. We find that effective income tax rates have decreased over the sample period; however, when payroll taxes are included in our calculations, total tax burdens have increased significantly. Interestingly, this increase in middle class wage taxation has occurred over an historical period in which total Federal tax revenue relative to GDP has remained somewhat constant. This implies that the middle class has borne an increasing relative tax burden in recent years. We hope that our analyses inform both the taxpaying public and policy makers of the historical status of middle class wage earners.

The ‘New Working Class’

1960 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 248-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Lockwood
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Full Employment ◽  
Political History ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Class Structure ◽  
Secular Changes ◽  
New Middle Class ◽  
Wage Earning ◽  
Material Welfare

The problem of the ‘new working class’ is located in the events of recent political history, specifically in the three successive electoral defeats of the Labour Party. In attempting to explain the failure of the traditional working class party to increase, or even retain, its support among the wage-earning population, a good many generalizations about the causes and consequences of secular changes in the class structure have been advanced and disputed. The salient thesis is that which seeks to account for the conservative drift of the working class in terms of their growing prosperity and their gradual assimilation to the middle class in an economy of full employment and rising expectations of material welfare. As one writer puts it: “The whole working class finds itself on the move, moving towards new middle class values and middle class existence” (1).

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