By Tim Logan
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
For Stephanie and Bruce DeChambeau, Emily's preschool has been a huge break.
It meant they could both work, and their boisterous blond 4-year-old could spend her days for free at a city magnet school she loves.
But preschool's almost over for the year, and they just learned Tuesday that Emily can't go to summer school there, too.
"Now we're like, 'Oh, crap,'" Stephanie said. "What do we do?"
So with no family in the area and the kindness of friends "exhausted," the DeChambeaus face a difficult choice: Work fewer hours, or pay for day care.
They can't afford either, which makes this crisis of child care just the latest example of how one family is confronting the squeeze that faces many middle-class families in St. Louis. A squeeze, many say, that is making the current economic hard times even harder.
If you lined up every family in St. Louis from richest to poorest, the DeChambeaus would stand right about in the middle. Last year they earned $53,000, a bit more than the area's median household income, which in 2006, the most recent year available, was $49,765.
So the middle is $50,000. That's a nice round number, and it sounds as if it should be enough to live on. It's about what the average high school teacher here makes, or a skilled construction worker. A solid middle-class wage.
But that solid middle-class wage just doesn't go as far as it used to.
After decades of steady growth relative to inflation, the median household income here has flattened out in recent years. In fact, it's down a bit: What $45,309 bought you in 2001, $49,765 doesn't quite buy you now. And that number is from 2006, when gas and food and many other essentials cost less than they do today.
To Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank that advocates for higher middle-class wages, that data speaks to a growing problem: Prices are rising faster than wages, so most working people are not getting ahead.
"This is the economy that people live in, not the one you hear reported from brokerage houses or the cheerleaders in the (White House)," he said. "The fact is, wage growth has been lousy, and people know that."
SCARY PROSPECTS
For the DeChambeaus, there's actually a little more money than there used to be. Stephanie has earned raises and promotions in her job in development at the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. And Bruce, who finished a master's degree at Covenant Seminary in Creve Coeur, then stayed home to raise Emily, began a part-time job after she began preschool in the fall.
They have enough to live on, but they feel as if they're falling behind.
"It's scary," Stephanie said. "I'm 37, my husband's 43. And we have no prospects for retirement, or even the idea of buying a house."
And they're thrifty. Right now they rent a little house off Gravois Avenue in south St. Louis. They drive paid-off used cars — a 1996 Nissan Altima and a 2001 Toyota Camry. They buy Emily's clothes off eBay and lots of Stephanie's from the Scholar Shop. They did without a cell phone until recently, when they joined a family plan with Stephanie's sister for $10 a month. Cable TV? Forget it.
"It's just movies for us," mostly from the library, Stephanie said. "That's not to say I don't miss 'The Daily Show.'"
Then there's food, and gas, and all the requirements of a growing 4-year-old, three credit card balances to pay down and $250 a month for health insurance. They get by, but there's not a lot of give.
"When I think about $50,000, I keep thinking, 'How can this be so hard?'" Stephanie says. "It doesn't make sense, because that is a lot of money. But, then, it's $4 a gallon for gas, $4 a gallon for milk."
The DeChambeaus aren't the only ones who feel anxious.
A recent survey by the Pew Research Center found that 56 percent of Americans say they've either fallen back or made no progress financially in the last five years. The results, Pew said, were "the most downbeat" it's seen in a half-century of polling.
That sentiment may only deepen if the economy stays in the doldrums, said Jack Strauss, an economist at St. Louis University.
Most workers didn't gain much during the growth in recent years, but now they're feeling the pain of the slowdown, and coping with higher prices.
"That's one of the reasons the average person thinks we're in a recession," he said.
And it contributes to the economy's troubles, Strauss said, because families have less to spend on nonessentials, the kind of spending that drives growth. It's what has some economists calling this a "consumer-led" downturn, unlike past recessions centered on slowdowns in investment or business spending.
"Unless we get the vast majority of people seeing their wages grow, we're not going to see the kind of growth we want," Mishel said.
MANY WORRIES
Perhaps it's just memory, but both DeChambeaus say things seemed easier when they were growing up.
Both come from small towns — she in Michigan, he in Washington — and families with one main breadwinner. Stephanie earns more now than her father did when he retired, and he raised three children on that salary. The son of a librarian, Bruce dreamed of earning $60,000.
"Now that'd be like $120,000," he said.
They could earn more — maybe not $120,000, but more — had Bruce found a job when he finished seminary. But he couldn't find anything in adult Christian ministry that paid much more than the cost of day care and, he admits, he wanted to stay home and raise his daughter, which he calls "the ultimate challenge" for an educator.
"I'm so glad we did it, but I lost two years on my job search," he said. "It was a very real trade-off, and that has its consequences."
Now he's working part time at the mall. And educating Emily looms larger. They wonder what they'll do in a couple of years, when she's school-age. They love their city neighborhood but are unsure about the schools. They can't afford the private route, and the suburbs seem out of reach.
As for college, Stephanie jokes that she's glad to hear that elite universities such as Harvard are cutting tuition for families that earn less than $50,000.
"Maybe we'll have a chance," she says.
Worries about higher education are something Lara Granich hears all the time. She's the director of Missouri Jobs With Justice, a coalition of labor and social groups that pushes for workers rights. Along with health care costs, it's probably the biggest concern her members have.
"Even the ones who aren't college-educated themselves, they all want a college education for their children," she said. "But that seems increasingly out of reach."
And those who do go to college are being choosier about what they do, some say, and are less likely to stick with traditionally middle-class jobs in public service.
It's a big problem for schools and state government, says Richard von Glahn, organizing director of the Communication Workers of America Local 6355, which represents about 1,400 people at two state agencies and the Parkway School District.
"A lot of young people come to work, then leave after two or three years, because they can't look at it as a career," he said. "It's not something they can raise a family on."
Those who do stay put often take a second job to make ends meet.
"More so now than ever," von Glahn said.
Still, the DeChambeaus know things could be much tougher. On that line from richest to poorest, there are many people on the poorer side of them.
They do make $53,000 a year. They have options and a little room to trim their budgets; many families don't. They both say they feel a little guilty worrying about money problems when others have it worse. But they also think about what their parents gave them, and feel a little guilty they're not doing better. And they're still trying to figure out what to do with Emily this summer.
The DeChambeaus often discuss whether they're "making it," Bruce says. Generally, the verdict is no.
"What we were able to do a few years ago, we just can't do now," Bruce said. "It's not where we wanted to be."
