The “Income Revolution” – an exchange

A close study of Mr. Gabriel Kolko’s article, “The American ‘Income Revolution’ ” in the Winter 1957 issue of DISSENT shows its scientific apparatus to be faulty; but I shall confine my criticism to the tables on pages 48-49, which are central to the article. They seem to show that nearly 50 per cent of American families had an income below the so-called “maintenance level” in 1935/6 as well as in 1947 and 1950. Could anybody who has looked around seriously maintain that “the concentration of large families below maintenance level has remained constant since WPA” and that living standards during the 1935/6 depression years equalled the post-war boom years? How were these statistics arrived at?

The riddle’s solution is simple. When the WPA defined “maintenance level” in 1937 it tried to approximate the expenses of the median family ($1,261 a year). How well it succeeded in doing so is confirmed by its fin...