{"id":16,"date":"2026-05-12T11:04:56","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T11:04:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worcestermovingreport.com\/?p=16"},"modified":"2026-05-12T11:04:56","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T11:04:56","slug":"its-hard-work-making-it-in-the-middle-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worcestermovingreport.com\/?p=16","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s hard work making it in the middle class"},"content":{"rendered":"
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THE THUMPING BASS <\/mark><\/strong>and intermittent shrieks of delight coursing through the neighborhood do not particularly bother Kristina Boldebuck. <\/p>\n

Read more Mass. voters might face 11 ballot questions this fall. Here\u2019s where each measure stands.<\/a><\/p>\n

She\u2019s\u202fcharmed by the annual Billerica Lions Spring Carnival\u202fone street over, its scenes of classic Americana\u202fand\u202fthe buzzy energy\u202fin the air.\u202f At night, Boldebuck can look out the window and see an illuminated Ferris wheel rising from behind her neighbors\u2019 homes.\u202fThe event is such a draw that her two kids\u202fcame\u202fhome\u202ffrom college\u202fjust to attend.\u202f\u202f<\/p>\n

It\u2019s traditions like the carnival, the annual Yankee Doodle Homecoming, and a parade to mark Billerica Little League\u2019s opening day that drew Boldebuck two decades ago to return to the town where she grew up. By all measures, it\u2019s a good life, even a great life. She was able to raise her children near her parents, live within walking distance of a school, immerse herself in a community. <\/p>\n

So does she feel like she\u2019s \u201cmade it,\u201d like she\u2019s now living the American dream? For the most part, the answer is yes. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m\u202fhappy.\u202fI\u2019m\u202fgrateful for what\u202fI\u2019ve\u202fbeen able to have and experience and have my children experience,\u201d\u202fBoldebuck said,\u202fseated\u202fat her kitchen table on\u202fa\u202fsunny April day.<\/p>\n

At the same time, she\u2019s aware that, as much as Billerica feels like the picture of unpretentious, middle-class suburbia, it\u2019s increasingly difficult to put down roots there when home prices are \u201cso crazy.\u201d \u201cBuying in this town is very difficult, and it\u2019s concerning to me for this generation coming up,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Despite its blue-collar trappings, Billerica is, arguably, on the upper half of the economic ladder. Its median household income of $148,200 is some 40 percent higher than the state as a whole, and about four in five homes are owner-occupied \u2014 something that is probably true for all of those on Heritage Road, where Boldebuck lives. The average property value assessment on the street was more than $650,000 last year, which is at once head-spinning and run of the mill when you consider prices in Massachusetts more broadly.<\/p>\n

Of course, how you view Billerica \u2014 a Merrimack Valley town of 42,000 residents about 20 miles northwest of Boston \u2014 all depends on what constitutes the middle class these days. It\u2019s long been a term for where upwardly mobile Americans hope to land, but there is no single agreed-upon definition. For many, it\u2019s owning your own home and earning enough to squirrel some away for a comfortable retirement; for others, it\u2019s simply having the financial stability to navigate the bumps along the way.<\/p>\n

Boldebuck, a former Billerica star softball player who in 2010 was inducted into the high school\u2019s athletic hall of fame, works as director of business applications at a human services agency. She knows the economics of upward mobility have changed dramatically. The model from her own childhood \u2014 her father worked in a factory, and her mother worked part-timeas a school paraprofessional while devoting significant time to raising children \u2014 feels impossible to replicate today.<\/p>\n

Even two professional incomes don\u2019t necessarily provide a clear pathway these days into the life Boldebuck\u2019s parents were able to carve out with working-class wages. While the state perches atop national rankings for income and education, many of the families who, on paper, should be able to \u201cmake it\u201d instead feel themselves teetering. <\/p>\n

The theme in Massachusetts today seems to be: It\u2019s a great life if you can afford it, and if you don\u2019t already have a foothold, good luck. <\/p>\n

Households with two college-educated parents working full-time are struggling to pay for the most expensive child care in the country. Students who came here for world-class universities and want to stay longer are gobsmacked by the cost to buy a house. Retirees on fixed incomes who own increasingly valuable homes are largely unable to tap into those assets unless they move, and in the meantime, they\u2019re smothered by a related rise in property taxes. <\/p>\n

All of that is happening as\u202fMassachusetts has been steadily getting richer.\u202fThe share of Bay Staters in the middlemost income tier is\u202fshrinking, but\u202fit\u2019s\u202fnot the kind of\u202fglobalization-fueled hollowing out that has decimated manufacturing hubs where companies slashed jobs in favor of cheaper international labor. Most of the movement\u202fherehas, in fact,\u202fbeen upward. More than one in five Massachusetts households now\u202fearn\u202fat least $215,000 per year, according to a \u202frecent\u202fBoston Indicators analysis, compared to just 4 percent with similar inflation-adjusted incomes in the mid-1970s.\u202f\u202f<\/p>\n

The problem is that\u202fcosts are growing even more quickly. Many Massachusetts residents,\u202fas a\u202fresult,\u202fare\u202flargely not\u202ffeeling much financial improvement, and they\u2019re increasingly pessimistic that what once seemed attainable will be within reach for their kids.\u202fA new MassINC Polling Group survey found that Bay Staters \u202fthink the next generation will be financially worse\u202foff, not better, by a two-to-one margin.\u202f\u202f<\/p>\n

The consequences are existential. If people with solidly middle incomes can\u2019t afford the lifestyles they want here, businesses will struggle to fill open positions, schools will bleed enrollment, and communities will lose their liveliness. Stretch that out over a period of years or decades, and the state\u2019s economic engines face major risks. Boston Magazine <\/em>illustrated a recent cover story about the growing sense of fragility with a massive wrecking ball looming over an otherwise picturesque Back Bay skyline. <\/p>\n

For Boldebuck,\u202fwho bought her home for about $470,000 when she was still in her 20s\u202fand is\u202fnow 47, it\u202fwas easier to\u202fget into the market in Billerica because she had\u202fequity from prior home purchases in Florida and Virginia. Even at the time, she recalls friends \u201cstruggling to\u202ftry and buy houses in Massachusetts because the housing market was so high.\u201d\u202f<\/p>\n

Her fears\u202ftoday\u202fcome\u202ffrom thinking about her kids.\u202f\u201cDo I think that my children, who are now approaching the age that I was\u202fcoming in here, could do it right now?\u201d\u202fshe\u202fsaid of her home purchase. \u201cNo.\u201d\u202f <\/p>\n

Heritage Road, where Boldebuck lives, is a three-quarter-mile span linking Pond Street to Boston Road, Billerica\u2019s main commercial throughway. The comparatively tiny street and a handful of offshoots form the Heritage Heights neighborhood, whose several dozen homes are inseparably linked to CommonWealth Beacon<\/em>: 30 years ago, the very first issue of CommonWealth<\/em> (as we were formerly known) profiled the neighborhood in an effort to take the temperature more broadly of Massachusetts life for those trying to secure a measure of economic security. The cover of the magazine featured a smiling, stereotypical family of four, with the headline, \u201cMaking it in the Middle Class.\u201d We returned to the neighborhood in 2001 and again in 2006, each time finding most residents content with their lot, yet that satisfaction was often accompanied by an undercurrent of financial unease.<\/p>\n

Today, it doesn\u2019t feel like all that much has changed in Heritage Heights, other than an expansion here and there to some of the homes sitting on lots of half an acre or more. Evidence of kids dots the landscape, bicycles fearlessly left unattended lying on the sidewalk. Two adjacent backyards have strikingly similar playground sets, the turrets peeking up at one another over the fence. It\u2019s quiet enough on a Sunday afternoon to hear the birdsong as a conversation in stereo. Ring a doorbell, and you\u2019re more likely to be met with a dog\u2019s barks than not.<\/p>\n

One of the most distinct characteristics\u202fseems to\u202fbe\u202fthat many of the neighborhood\u2019s denizens have been here for decades. Talk to anyone and they\u2019ll mention multiple neighbors\u202fwho\u202fhave owned their homes since the\u202fsubdivision\u2019s\u202fconstruction in the 1970s.\u202fIn several cases, the current generation of residents grew up on the street, moved away, and then returned\u202fin\u202fadulthood to take over their parents\u2019 houses.\u202f\u202f <\/p>\n

That\u2019s the story for David McLaughlin, a 31-year-old who\u2019s more or less a Heritage Road lifer. His family \u2014 father, mother, and five siblings or stepsiblings \u2014 moved to the neighborhood from Somerville in 1997, when he was about two. His parents got married years later in Las Vegas, and their wedding picture is still in the house today: both grinning in Red Sox jerseys, his David Ortiz, hers Johnny Damon, basking in the joy of the 2004 curse-breaking World Series. <\/p>\n

The house is now in a state of transition. McLaughlin\u2019s father died in 2021, and his mother fell ill, too, prompting him to move back home to care for her. After her death in February, McLaughlin is still there with his fianc\u00e9e, Julie Martin, one brother, and their two cats, Monty and Misty. McLaughlin and Martin would like to make the home their own, but they need to jump through a series of legal hoops first. <\/p>\n

McLaughlin graduated from Emerson College in 2017, and he\u2019s working part-time while on the waitlist for a union job in the film industry.Martin works at a historical conservation center, and she moonlights as a stop-motion animator. There\u2019s been no shortage of adversity, but they\u2019re making it work, planning a wedding for this fall. <\/p>\n

It seems like a comfortable middle-class life, and McLaughlin thinks of his neighborhood as a modern-day Norman Rockwell painting, pointing out\u202fthe various details that would feature in the\u202ftableau: one neighbor\u202fkeeps the school bus he drives parked on the street, another\u202fadvertises his contracting company on\u202fhis front lawn, and Amazon trucks cruise up and down the road delivering packages\u202fto those who\u202fare out at work.\u202f\u202f <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is what everyone at least would hope for as a baseline,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have enough. It\u2019d\u202fbe nice to have more always, but I feel like it is enough.\u201d\u202f <\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t make him starry-eyed, though. McLaughlin notes that he has a college degree and is still only working part-time. His parents put significant work into the house, setting him up for success, but he still feels people his age more broadly face a tough outlook. \u201cI don\u2019t think we have the same opportunities\u201d as earlier generations, he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt seemed like they made more of a sacrifice of their time to keep building this up as something,\u201d McLaughlin said of the family home. \u201cI just hope I can continue that and not let the house fall into any disrepair now that they\u2019re not here.\u201d <\/p>\n

If there\u2019s a single unifying theme to the Massachusetts middle-class outlook in 2026, it\u2019s contradiction: We have more than ever, and in many cases, that\u2019s not enough to enjoy the stability of prior generations. <\/p>\n

During CommonWealth<\/em>\u2019s first decade, Massachusetts was a very well-educated and pretty well-paid state, landing toward the top of state income rankings after a period of sustained growth in the 1980s known as the \u201cMassachusetts Miracle.\u201d Technology, education, and health care were important sectors, but the so-called innovation economy had not yet fully taken flight.<\/p>\n

Today, the Bay State is a different place. Our economy now revolves around high-paying jobs in research, medicine, technology, and higher education. Since 2014, the size of the state\u2019s scientific research and development workforce has expanded at more than twice the national rate, . More than one in five people working in Massachusetts are directly or indirectly linked to \u201ceds and meds,\u201d according to by the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. <\/p>\n

In 2010, about 38 percent of Massachusetts adults over the age of 25 had at least a bachelor\u2019s degree, the highest rate in the country, according to US Census Bureau data. By 2024, the share had climbed to 47 percent, still more than any other state. And in recent years, Massachusetts has overtaken all states to secure the highest median household income in the nation \u2014 nearly $104,000 in 2024.<\/p>\n

Our collective self-image is now much more office- or lab-based professional than it is Casey Affleck at Dunkin\u2019. The accents are fading, and the tough-guy world depicted in so many movies set in and around Boston is, for the most part, long gone.<\/p>\n

Mark Melnik, director of the Economic and Public Policy Research group at the Donahue Institute, often gives talks to Massachusetts audiencesabout the state economy. He points out early on that we have the highest income in the country. Reading the room, he quickly adds, \u201cNaturally, what you\u2019re thinking is, \u2018Well, why don\u2019t I feel that rich?\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s because of the high cost of housing, high cost of energy, high cost of child care, and all these different things,\u201d Melnik said in an interview. <\/p>\n

Indeed, many of the gains Bay State workers have made over the past decade and a half have been eclipsed by even bigger increases in the costs of fundamental middle-class building blocks. From 2010 to 2024, average private wages in Massachusetts increased by a bit more than half. In the same span, however, the median sale price for a single-family home more than doubled, average annual premiums for an employer-sponsored family health insurance plan soared more than 90 percent, the average annual cost of placing an infant in center-based child care grew nearly 60 percent, and the average sticker price at private universities nationwide rose 68 percent. <\/p>\n

Add in shorter-term spikes to more volatile costs like heat and electricity, and you can understand why more than four in 10 Bay Staters say they just barely earn enough to pay their bills or fall short of that target altogether, according to the new MassINC Polling Group conducted for CommonWealth<\/em> Beacon<\/em>and WBUR. (The Polling Group is partially owned by MassINC, the nonprofit that publishes CommonWealth Beacon<\/em>and runs the MassINC Policy Center.) <\/p>\n

\u201cIn Massachusetts, we have high salaries, and so that\u2019s why we\u202fdon\u2019t\u202frank terribly low among states in terms of the percentage of households that can afford a middle-class lifestyle. But one above-average salary\u202fisn\u2019t\u202fenough,\u201d said Elise Rapoza,\u202fa senior research associate with the MassINC Policy Center.\u202f\u201cYou really need two above-average salaries.\u201d\u202f\u202f<\/p>\n

Rapoza and Ben Forman, the policy center\u2019s director, have spent months pondering\u202fhow to assess the state of the middle class in 2026.\u202fLooking just at earnings wouldn\u2019t do it, and they felt that some other cost-of-living assessments are too focused on \u201csurvival budgets,\u201d\u202for what\u2019s needed just to scrape by,\u202fwithout\u202fgrappling with whether the\u202fimplicit promises of the middle class are in fact achievable.\u202f\u202f<\/p>\n

They settled on building their own\u202fcalculations of what people need to earn for a stereotypical middle-class\u202flifestyle, including not just basic expenses like housing and child care but also\u202fthe ability to save money for retirement or an emergency, and modest spending on\u202frecreation\u202f\u2014\u202flike going out to dinner once in a while, or\u202f visiting family during the holidays\u202f\u2014\u202falong the way.\u202fRapoza described the metric as \u201cwhat we think you should be able to afford if you work hard, play by the rules, and follow the advice of financial planners who want you to be able to retire comfortably.\u201d\u202f\u202f<\/p>\n

The price tags they discovered were higher than she expected. \u202fA single adult between the ages of 26 and 34 needs to earn at least $82,000 per year to meet\u202fthe MassINC Policy Center\u2019s definition of a middle-class life; a household of two adults older than 65 needs a combined income of $95,000.\u202f\u202f\u202f<\/p>\n

Costs explode once you factor in children: A family of two parents, both working, with two children must earn at least $202,000 annually to enjoy the middle class without major tradeoffs, the second-highest rate in the country behind Hawaii. For comparison, Census data estimate the median household income for Massachusetts homes with two married parents and any number of children to be about $182,000. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s even more dire for single parents. A mother or father trying to raise two children alone needs a salary of at least $158,000 to attain a middle-class life, Rapoza and Forman calculated. They found that only 1 percent of households with a single parent between the ages of 26 and 34 hit that threshold.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf\u202fyou look at people who have what would be considered middle-class jobs by the amount of education they require, the amount of prestige they confer, a lot of people make well below what this minimum budget suggests they should be able to make in order to afford a middle-class lifestyle,\u201d Rapoza said.\u202f\u202f\u202f <\/p>\n

On\u202feach of\u202fCommonWealth<\/em>\u2019s\u202fpast twovisits to\u202fHeritage Heights,\u202fwe highlighted Lori Carroll and her daughter, Breanna. In 2001,\u202fCarroll\u202fwas back in her childhood home with her parents after a divorce,\u202ftrying to figure out next steps\u202fas a single mother.\u202fIn 2006, Carroll was on steadier footing after\u202f purchasing\u202fthe house and building an in-law apartment for her mother.\u202fHer goal all along was to give Breanna a stable home.\u202f\u202f<\/p>\n

Read more Lawmakers complete bid to kill legislative stipend reforms<\/a><\/p>\n

Twenty years later, Carroll is still there in the same\u202fhome, now with the roles swapped. Breanna and her husband, Ryan, moved back in with Carroll a few years ago to cut down on their expenses so they could save enough for their own place. It\u2019s\u202fa full house: Carroll, her husband, Jay,\u202fBreanna, Ryan, and their newborn baby, Logan, plus\u202fa\u202fthree-year-old Shiloh shepherd, Luca, who seems to conceive of himself as a 110-pound lap dog.\u202fFor Carroll, it feels like life has \u201ccome full circle.\u201d\u202f\u202f<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is what\u202ffamily\u202fis supposed to be, right? You\u2019re\u202fsupposed to catch each other when you need a safety net,\u201d\u202fCarroll, now 58, said. \u201cMy parents never made me feel bad about that. Home was always home, whatever you needed. You come back whenever, whatever age.\u202fTo be able to give these kids a good opportunity to save for a house like I had is very fulfilling.\u201d\u202f\u202f<\/p>\n

All four adults under her roof are working. Jay is a golf\u202fprofessional managing the Patriot course\u202fthat\u2019s part of Hanscom Air Force Base, Breanna is a nurse, Ryan works in finance for Dell, and Carroll\u202fstarted a new job about five years ago\u202fat Pindrop, a fraud and authentication cybersecurity company.\u202f\u202f <\/p>\n

When Carroll grew up in the house, she and her two sisters shared bedrooms\u202f\u2014\u202fliving out the ethos of\u202f\u201cmaking do with what you got,\u201d she said.\u202fToday, Carroll gets the sense that\u202feveryone wants more, more, more, and\u202fconstruction\u202ffollows. \u201cI just wish builders could build more middle-class homes on the land that they put these enormous, unreachable ones on,\u201d she said.\u202f\u202f <\/p>\n

Massachusetts has few \u201cstarter homes\u201d available for first-time buyers to get a foothold in the market.\u202fBut what does it actually take to buy a house in Massachusetts today?\u202f <\/p>\n

The median sale price for a single-family home in the state was $638,000 last year, according to data tracked by real estate analysis firm The Warren Group. Assume a fairly low interest rate of 6 percent, and a roughly 10 percent downpayment of $64,000. For a 30-year mortgage, you\u2019d face monthly payments of more than $3,700 before accounting for property taxes or utilities, each of which add hundreds of dollars more. <\/p>\n

Scrounging up that much cash, essentially a solid annual salary, is no easy task in a state where the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment surpasses $3,000 monthly. And for a 20 percent downpayment, often a goal suggested by financial experts, a Bay Stater buying a middle-of-the-pack home would need more than $125,000. <\/p>\n

Those costs tend to run much higher in Greater Boston, where much of the state\u2019s population and economic activity is centered. With that in mind, it\u2019s easy to see why we\u2019re close to the bottom when it comes to homeownership rates among younger residents. Last year, The Boston Globe<\/em> reported that only about one in three Massachusetts residents between the ages of 25 and 34 owned a home, the fourth-lowest rate in the country. In the new MassINC Polling Group survey, more than half of respondents ages 18 to 34 said their finances delayed or outright prevented them from owning a home. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe concept of saving up $100,000, $150,000 is just \u2014 it\u2019s absurd,\u201d said Cassidy Norton, associate publisher at The Warren Group. \u201cYou just look at\u202fthat\u202fand you go, \u2018No, I can\u2019t do that.\u2019\u201d\u202f <\/p>\n

Compared to inflation, housing costs are\u202fessentially a\u202frunaway train. In 1996, the year CommonWealth<\/em> launched, the median single-family home in Massachusetts sold for just shy of $150,000,\u202faccording to The Warren Group data. If prices continued to increase over the ensuing three decades at the same rate as inflation, the median sale price last year would only have been about $308,000 last year.\u202f<\/p>\n

Melnik, the UMass Donahue expert, has both studied the dynamic and experienced it firsthand. An avid basketball fan and former Ohioan, Melnik recalls that after the Cleveland Cavaliers traded Kyrie Irving to the Celtics in 2017, Irving sold his home in Westlake, Ohio \u2014 which Realtor.com described as having a \u201ctwo-story living room, furnished with a hoop,\u201d a home theater, three-car garage, exercise room, and recording studio \u2014 for $755,000, less than Melnik and his wife paid the same year for a four-bedroom home in Natick that has neither a home theater nor a recording studio. <\/p>\n

Homeownership has long been seen as central to middle-class security, the most common way to build wealth over the course of adulthood and hand something down to the next generation. But there\u2019s evidence that younger Bay Staters do not view it the same way their parents did. <\/p>\n

MassINC pollsters asked respondents to pick three characteristics that \u201cbest define a middle-class lifestyle in Massachusetts today.\u201d About half of those 65 and older selected \u201cowning a home,\u201d making it the most common choice for that age bracket. Among those between the ages of 18 and 34, only 29 percent deemed owning a home to be a top middle-class signifier. <\/p>\n

What\u2019s unclear, and might be a chicken-and-egg problem, is why <\/em>there\u2019s such a pronounced age split. Are young adults in Massachusetts turning away from homeownership because they\u2019re less likely to view it as an attractive investment than their parents did? Or have they deprioritized it because it already feels out of reach? <\/p>\n

The nearly impossible math is why Lori Carroll\u2019s daughter and son-in-law ended up back underneath her roof. Breanna had hefty student loans after nursing school, and she and Ryan are working to pay down other debt while they save enough to buy their own home, ideally somewhere between Billerica and Ryan\u2019s family in Westborough. <\/p>\n

\u201cToday\u2019s\u202feconomy is just crazy,\u201d Carroll said, \u201cso they\u2019re currently working their butts off to save every dime.\u201d\u202f <\/p>\n

To reread\u202fCommonWealth<\/em>\u2019s\u202fprior features on the middle class 20 or 25 or 30 years later is to\u202fembrace temporal displacement. Almost every\u202fquote from decades ago, every expression of cautious hope, and every worry that the ladder is being yanked upward,\u202fout of reach of those\u202fjust about to\u202fstart their climbs, feels like it might as well have been said just last week.\u202f\u202f<\/p>\n

\u201cAll these other things go up and what stays down is your wages,\u201d Kathleen Jenkins, who at the time worked part-time in a doctor\u2019s office, said in the magazine\u2019s inaugural 1996 issue. <\/p>\n

\u201cHow does the middle class afford $400,000 for a basic house? There used to be a thing called starter homes, which you don\u2019t find anymore,\u201d Joanne Giovino, a homemaker living in Heritage Heights, said in our 2006 story. Today, the lack of starter homes is such a potent issue that a group of advocates wants to put a zoning-reform question on the November ballot explicitly pitched as a way to develop more of them.<\/p>\n

As familiar as those themes from earlier visits to Billerica sound, qualitatively and quantitatively,\u202fthere\u2019s\u202fmuch more a feeling of doom leaking through the cracks these days. One of the questions economists and pollsters often ask to get a sense of long-term trends is whether people think the outlook is improving over generations. As the MassINC Polling Group found, Bay Staters increasingly think the answer is \u201cno.\u201d\u202f<\/p>\n

One-third of Massachusetts residents say they are worse off than their parents were at the same age, about the same share as those who think they\u2019re better off. That\u2019s a 29-point swing toward pessimism from 2011, when, faced with the same question, 50 percent of respondents said they were better off than their parents and only 22 percent said they were on worse footing. The forward-looking assessment is downbeat, too: 44 percent said they expect the next generation will be worse off financially, compared to 22 percent who think it will be better off. <\/p>\n

Negativity is not unique to Massachusetts.\u202fNational consumer sentiment in April\u202fdropped to the lowest level\u202frecorded\u202fsince the University of Michigan began tracking\u202fit more than 60 years ago.\u202fFifty-five percent of Americans think their financial footing is worsening,\u202fthe highest rate in decades, according to Gallup. Derek Thompson, a staff writer for The Atlantic,<\/em>\u202fpondered in a recent blog headline: \u201cIf America\u2019s So Rich, How\u2019d It Get So Sad?\u201d<\/p>\n

An especially sharp juxtaposition between rising incomes and an inability to get ahead\u202fcomes from the\u202fcost of\u202fchild care.Putting an infant in full-time, center-based care cost Bay State families an average of $26,343\u202fin 2024, according to\u202f\u202fby the nonprofit group Child Care Aware of America, edging out Washington, DC, and Maryland for the\u202fmost expensive in the country.\u202f\u202f<\/p>\n

Many families pay a third of their income or more for care for a single child, or more than half if they have two children under 5 years old, said\u202fElizabeth Leiwant, the vice president of public policy and research\u202fat Neighborhood Villages, a Boston-based\u202fchild care\u202fadvocacy organization.\u202fIt gets easier once kids are old enough to start kindergarten, but\u202fLeiwant\u202fwarned of an \u201cillusion\u201d\u202fthere because after-school and summer care can still run $10,000 to $15,000 for parents whose work schedules don\u2019t line up with the school calendar.\u202f\u202f<\/p>\n

\u201cYou just see so many families who, when they start having to put their kid in care and they start crunching the numbers, if they move back to Michigan where they have grandparents or if they move north to one of the other New England states where the cost of living is\u202flower, their child care costs will go down,\u201d\u202fLeiwant\u202fsaid. \u201cThat just has a huge impact on people choosing to stay.\u201d\u202f <\/p>\n

Some of the cost-of-living problems are too macroeconomic in scale to be fixed by state government alone. That does not, however, mean there\u2019s no role the state can play in trying to ease the financial pressure on its residents.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a short list of the more impactful changes in the past five years: Beacon Hill mandated 177 cities and towns near MBTA service zone for more multifamily housing; authorized billions of dollars of borrowing and tax incentives to generate more housing production; committed hundreds of millions of state dollars per year to continue offering child care grants and school meals for all K-12 students, two programs that originally launched with federal support; made community college effectively free for anyone without a bachelor\u2019s degree; boosted state financial aid for four-year public colleges and universities; and expanded the tax credit families with children or dependents can claim. <\/p>\n

Those have made a difference, but when the cost-of-living problems are this big, they haven\u2019t made that much<\/em> of a difference.\u202f<\/p>\n

Leiwant\u202fsaid state funding for so-called C3\u202fchild care\u202fprovider grants and expanded eligibility for subsidies have kept costs \u201cstable,\u201d\u202fyet\u202fstill fall short of\u202fmaking\u202fcare that ranked as priciest in the country significantly more affordable.\u202fThe statewide housing stock increased by nearly 100,000 units between 2020 and 2025, but much of that reflects construction that had been underway for years, and sluggish permitting for new projects suggests Massachusetts is \u201cunlikely to come close\u201d to a state goal of adding 220,000 more units in the next decade,\u202faccording to\u202fa Boston Indicators report.\u202fFor all of the political capital burned to\u202fenforce the MBTA Communities Act over pockets of local intransigence, the law\u202fhas\u202fadded only about 7,000 housing units to the production pipeline.\u202f\u202f <\/p>\n

\u201cFixing the housing supply issue is like turning around a battleship,\u201d said Melnik. \u201cNo matter what Gov. Healey says, or what any of the municipal leaders say, it\u2019s going to take time to add enough supply to make some kind of meaningful stabilization.\u201d <\/p>\n

The biggest success appears to be on the higher education front. Officials say more than 90 percent of first-time, full-time community college students are now paying no tuition or fees, and the share of first-time, full-time students at UMass and other state universities who pay nothing after financial aid has increased from 40 percent a decade ago to more than 60 percent now. <\/p>\n

Frustrated by what they view as sclerotic state leadership, activists are agitating to wrench apart the rails that typically guide debate about policy reform. Several of the ballot questions on track to go before voters this fall take direct aim at the state\u2019s cost of living, including a proposal to impose the strictest rent control scheme in the country and another to cut the state\u2019s income tax rate.<\/p>\n

The fear, for politicians and employers alike, is that failure to ameliorate those concerns will nudge Massachusetts into a downward spiral from which recovery gets exponentially more difficult. Just look at the annual handwringing whenever the US Census Bureau releases its latest migration data showing that more people left Massachusetts for other states than came here from other states \u2014 a trend that\u2019s held almost every single year since the turn of the millennium. The state\u2019s population has managed to grow during that span, but that\u2019s entirely due to immigration, which plays a pivotal role in the state\u2019s economic footing.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t want to be paralyzed by the catastrophic prognostications,\u201d\u202fsaid Doug Howgate, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation. \u201cFrom a policy standpoint, the next steps are\u202frelatively clear, right? First and foremost,\u202fwe\u202fneed\u202fa sufficient\u202fsupply of housing that folks in Massachusetts can afford\u202fto find a place to live\u202fthat\u2019s\u202fconvenient to where they work.\u201d\u202f\u202f<\/p>\n

\u201cNone of the other stuff,\u201d he added, \u201creally works if we don\u2019t get a handle on that.\u201d\u202f\u202f <\/p>\n

Heritage Heights only goes so far as a synecdoche of middle-class life in Massachusetts today. CommonWealth <\/em>picked it because its cookie-cutter suburban trappings seemed quintessentially American, noting the blend of \u201cprofessional and blue-collar workers,\u201d and citing the mostly European variety of surnames on property records as evidence of an \u201cethnic mix.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you happen to find yourself at the corner of Heritage Road and, say, Homestead Lane,\u201d Dave Denison wrote in 1996, \u201cand if you forget for the moment that you are only 20 miles from the Eastern Seaboard, you can imagine yourself standing in the middle of America.\u201d Five years later, Neil Miller described the neighborhood as \u201cmiddle class, no pretensions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those analyses elide the fact that, even two or three decades ago, the area was considerably whiter and considerably better-paid than Massachusetts as a whole. The split is more pronounced today: About one-third of Bay Staters identified as nonwhite in the most recent five-year American Community Survey, while in the Census tract that contains Heritage Heights, only one in 10 residents are people of color, and the median household income is more than 60 percent higher than in Massachusetts as a whole.<\/p>\n

The imagery also flattens the notion of a successful middle-class life into a narrower, perhaps stereotypical vision inextricable from suburbia \u2014 a single-family, owner-occupied home on a larger lot with a car or commuter rail-dependent commute \u2014 as if city centers and urban schools must be escaped in order to climb the socioeconomic ladder.<\/p>\n

But Heritage Heights still works as a way to take the state\u2019s pulse. Its residents are, like most in Massachusetts, largely happy with what they have, but also aware that future generations will have a much harder time getting to the same place. <\/p>\n

Kristina Boldebuck can welcome her growing kids home from college for a weekend, roll back the clock and partake in local Billerica traditions like they did years ago. David McLaughlin can honor his parents\u2019 legacy by keeping the house they tended in the family with the same care they displayed. Lori Carroll can give her daughter the same support she got all those years ago, so that one day Breanna can strike out on her own with security. And when Breanna does, she\u2019ll probably be in a better position than many of her peers, given the obstacles that seem to be growing by the day.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just feel like it keeps going in the wrong direction for the young people,\u201d said Carroll. \u201cThat\u2019s who I worry about the most.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Political Notebook: Data centers get their tax breaks, taxpayer group side-eyes ballot measures<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If there\u2019s a single unifying theme to the Massachusetts middle-class outlook in 2026, it\u2019s contradiction: We have more than ever, and in many cases, that\u2019s not enough to enjoy the stability of prior generations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-class"],"yoast_head":"\nIt\u2019s hard work making it in the middle class - Worcester Moving Report<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/worcestermovingreport.com\/?p=16\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"It\u2019s hard work making it in the middle class - 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