Copyright The Boston Globe
But along the way, she slowly started lifting herself up. She took classes at MassBay Community College in Framingham, where she worked at the bookstore full time, alongside a bookkeeping gig. She became a social worker — helping teen moms, people dealing with mental illness, and families living in shelters. And she sought out resources, including the Jeremiah Program, which supports single mothers in poverty. Today, she is 33, living in an income-restricted apartment in the Seaport and working in the Mayor’s Office of Housing. Her bachelor’s degree is just a few classes away. Ortiz has worked mightily to dig herself out of a hole, and she is on the brink of emerging on solid ground. Giving up the nonprofit work she loved was difficult but necessary, because it didn’t pay enough. Moving to the Seaport, even into affordable housing, stretched her finances, but like so many other low-income families, she chose to sacrifice short-term stability in favor of long-term success. It’s a strategy that can pay off over time: Research shows that families who move to areas with less poverty significantly improved children’s rates of college attendance and future earnings. And going to college has long been a stepping stone toward upward mobility. But Ortiz is living in a world in which each generation struggles to do better than the last. With costs soaring, jobs increasingly insecure, and safety nets shrinking, climbing the ladder toward prosperity — or even stability — has become an increasingly formidable journey. She has turned her life around to get to where she is, but all her striving — all the hard work and tough choices — may no longer be enough. “Financially it’s really terrifying,” she said, noting her job could go away “in the blink of an eye.” “There’s no security in anything.” *** This sense of uncertainty is everywhere these days. The foundations for establishing a comfortable, middle-class life have shifted significantly, and the systems that once helped people attain that stability have faltered. In the 1970s, about a quarter of the workforce had union jobs in manufacturing and other blue-collar professions, with strong worker protections and decent pay. College degrees weren’t necessarily required to land good jobs, and most people retired in their 60s, leaving room for younger generations to move up behind them. The vast majority of families had two parents and fewer child-care costs. The path to building a stable life and propelling future generations was clear. This reality is long gone. Housing costs have soared, job security has plummeted, andpensions have become a rarity. People are working longer, with little to show for it, as rising prices eat into their incomes. A landmark social mobility study by economist Raj Chetty, now at Harvard, found only half of children born in the 1980s earn more than their parents, compared to 90 percent of those born in 1940. The largest declines have been for families in the middle class. Chetty has built on this research, showing that children who move to neighborhoods with less poverty or whose peers’ parents have higher rates of employment have a better shot at improving their lives. In other words: It pays to surround yourself with success. Ortiz knew this instinctively. During COVID, Ortiz used her stimulus checks to move from Dorchester to the Seaport, when her oldest daughter was 5 and her twin girls were 9 months old. The rent was higher, but the neighborhood was safe and filled with the kind of successful people she wanted her daughters to be surrounded by. But as housing prices rise and wages stagnate, it has become increasingly difficult for the more than 2 million working-class Massachusetts residents to follow this path to the middle class. In Boston, 27-year-olds who were born to poor parents in 1992 earned 4.1 percent less than their counterparts did in 1978. In Austin, on the other hand, incomes for 27-year-olds born in low-income families rose 6.4 percent over that time. White children born in low-income families on the East and West coasts in the late ‘70s had relatively good odds of moving up, but by the early ‘90s, those rates had sunk. Upward mobility has improved for Black children born in poverty, although their chances of success are still lower overall. In three decades as a social worker in Worcester, Anne Bureau has never seen anything like it. It’s not just the lowest income families struggling, she said. “People are working their butts off,” she said, “and they’re not getting ahead.” *** Hannah Tower, who lives in Dudley, is also trying to pave a better path for her children. Two years ago, she became a certified phlebotomist and EKG tech but hasn’t been able to get a job because she can’t afford child care. So she’s stuck visiting food pantries and signing up for Christmas toy giveaways — and she doesn’t see that changing at least until her 3-year-old starts school. “I was looking forward to going to work and having an identity besides super mom,” she said. But even if Tower found work in her field, potentially making $70,000 or $80,000 a year, things would be tight. Current salaries don’t necessarily provide a sense of financial security amid the surging cost of buying a house, raising a child, and going to college in Massachusetts. Wages for the lowest earners have increased more quickly in the past few years than those in higher-paying jobs, according to the Economic Policy Institute, but rising costs have eaten into those gains. In fact, between 2020 and 2024, the prices of inexpensive brands rose more quickly than those of more expensive varieties of the same goods — a phenomenon Harvard economist Alberto Cavallo has dubbed “cheapflation.” Indeed, businesses that specialize in low-cost items have been buffeted by growing economic anxiety over tariffs and job uncertainty. McDonald’s reported recently that it has been losing low-income customers, while gaining higher-income diners, and Walmart’s CEO said that middle- and lower-income customers have been avoiding buying “discretionary” items that have increased in price. A critical stabilizing force for families trying to find a way ahead are public benefits such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP; Medicaid, which provides free health care; and Pell grants for low-income college students. But deep cuts to these programs were just signed into law by President Trump, and restrictions for affordable housing are also on the table. The recent cutting off of SNAP funds during the government shutdown shows the fragility of these safety nets. Many forms of assistance also aren’t regularly adjusted to reflect rising costs, which means benefits don’t go as far, or cover as many people in need, as they used to. “Nothing keeps pace with the cost of living,” said Marybeth Campbell, CEO of Worcester Community Action Council. The Great Recession, the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression, also wreaked havoc on people’s earnings, particularly for those just starting out. Litani Bassett was unable to find a job in her field when she graduated from college in 2008, and for the next decade, during the long, slow economic recovery, she made do with minimum-wage retail jobs. Finally she landed a job at a Worcester nonprofit helping people navigate SNAP benefits. Her husband, a self-employed roofer who bought their house when he was young, is unable to work as much as he used to. So Bassett, 39, has become the main breadwinner. Their household income is low enough to qualify for $26 a month of the same SNAP benefits she educates families about as part of her job. And given the recent cuts levied on the program, her benefits and her job could be at risk. “The world just costs so much money,” Bassett said. “In one sense my paycheck looks good, but in another sense, where is it?” To keep her family afloat, she’s become a master of frugality. She waits to go to the grocery store until the cupboards are bare. She cuts coupons, redeems bottles and cans, and spends vacation days hunkered down at home with her husband and two children. To get the last bit of toothpaste out of the tube, she cuts it open and scrapes it out. Money is so tight that Bassett has even resisted getting tumors on her ovary tested, worried they will be cancerous like those on her other ovary. That one was removed nine years ago, generating a $50,000 hospital bill that her health insurance provider initially declined to pay but eventually did — something Bassett fears could happen again. “You save for a rainy day,” she said, “but that rainy day always seems to come.” *** Buying a house, long a signifier of middle-class status, is considered the most dependable way to build wealth. But in Greater Boston, doing so requires a household income of $229,000, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. That’s more than twice the income needed 10 years ago. Richardson Andre has been thinking about buying a house since he dropped out of college in 2009 and got his real estate license to help pay his sister’s hospital bills. To achieve that goal, he’s had to hustle, working two jobs for more than a decade “to try to realize the American dream.” He sold houses — about 15 in total around Boston — while working in home improvement and as a security guard. Each time he drove past beautiful homes in Brookline, Newton, and Canton, he thought: It will be my turn one day. That day has still not arrived. More than anything, Andre, 41, wants to leave a legacy for his 10-year-old daughter and is working on a construction management degree at Benjamin Franklin Cummings Institute of Technology and a business degree from the University of Phoenix. But being a renter isn’t helping, especially considering that costs for lower-priced rentals have risen faster than for higher-cost units over the past five years, according to the rental platform Apartment List. No one in Andre’s immediate family has ever owned a home, including his parents, who raised four children working in food service and clothing manufacturing in Roxbury. A few other relatives owned homes but lost them due to predatory lending practices that left them unable to afford their mortgages, Andre said — an experience that helped compel him to get his real estate license. “In my family, everybody’s in survival mode: We work, we live, and we die,” he said. “The world is changing. If you’re in survival mode, you’re never going to make it.” Financial assistance is out there for first-time home buyers, but affordable homes are hard to come by — especially since government subsidies were directed more toward rentals following the housing market crash in 2008. Over the past decade in Boston, 90 percent of affordable housing production — funded by the government as well as by developers — has been for rentals, according to the Massachusetts Affordable Homeownership Alliance, although that ratio has narrowed as the city increases its commitment to homeownership. Between 2022 and 2024, 811 income-restricted homes were completed or under construction in Boston – a historic high but not nearly enough to meet demand. “We’re working on chipping away at a historical, structural gap,” said Hillary Pizer, director of organizing and policy at the alliance. “We need more affordable home-ownership opportunities to stabilize our families and communities.” *** Higher education historically has also been a reliable doorway to the middle class. But tuition costs have soared over the past two decades as has student debt, which doubled during that time. The earnings boost provided by a college education has also declined, leaving many wondering if the expense of a degree is worth it. That calculus is likely to get more difficult. Artificial intelligence is increasingly taking on simple coding tasks and junior-level customer service duties, potentially eliminating half of all entry-level white-collar jobs on the crucial bottom rung of the career ladder. The unemployment rate for 20- to 24-year-olds with a bachelor’s degree hit 9.3 percent in August, the highest rate in more than four years. For those who can afford it, having a four-year degree remains a proven way to climb the economic ladder. It still leads to higher incomes, greater wealth accumulation, and an increased likelihood of being a homeowner. Ortiz, the city employee living in the Seaport District, is on the brink of getting her degree. But as a single mother with three daughters, she faces significant challenges. Single mothers have a 28 percent poverty rate, according to the Center for American Progress. Meanwhile, the share of children raised by single mothers has doubled over the past few decades, and research shows those children are more likely to drop out of school and get caught up in the criminal justice system. “Any household that lacks two earners is going to be in financial trouble,” said Katherine Newman, a sociology and public policy professor at the University of California Berkeley who has written about middle-class economic insecurity. “For most families, a middle-class standard of living is very hard to achieve without more than one income.” Ortiz is used to dealing with adversity. Her whole life has been an uphill battle. Between work, school, and her children — and efforts to adopt her two nephews, whose mother is in prison — she worries about money constantly. Her 10-year-old daughter has a heart defect and will need surgery soon. Prayer helps keep her anxiety at bay. More than anything, she wants to provide a home where her children feel safe and loved — something she never had. She is trying to save money to buy a house, maybe even some land. But she knows how daunting it will be. She’d love to work with troubled children again but also knows the nonprofit world doesn’t pay what she needs. So for now, she has resigned herself, like so many others in this economy, to focus on what’s realistic rather than on her dreams. And even then, she isn’t sure how she’ll get there — or how far she can go. Photos by Erin Clark.
