Middle-class well-being at a local level: What role can mayors play?

Over the past year and a half, the Future of the Middle Class Initiative at Brookings has delved into what it means to be middle class. They spoke to middle-class Americans around the country before and during the pandemic in a series of focus groups and individual interviews. They launched the Middle Class Monitor, an interactive that compiles data on middle-class well-being over time. They even developed solutions to some of the reoccurring issues they heard in the focus groups and saw in the data in “A New Contract with the Middle Class.”  

On February 22, the Initiative hosted two mayors to discuss how quality of life can be improved for the middle class at a local level. Mayor Greg Fischer of Louisville, Kentucky, and Mayor Nan Whaley of Dayton, Ohio, shared the experiences they’ve had in their communities and what a path forward could look like. 

Request a free copy of “A New Contract with the Middle Class.” 

Viewers submitted questions by emailing [email protected] or via Twitter using the hashtag #MiddleClassMonitor.

Click here to watch the first event in the series, “Reframing the narrative of the middle class: Real voices pre- and post-pandemic,” and here to watch the second event, “How the American middle class is really doing: What the data tell us.”