The societal benefits of the establishment of a large and prosperous middle class have long been appreciated. Writing in Book IV, Aristotle espoused the benefits of a large and prosperous middle class, claiming that virtue is to be found between the extremes of wealth and poverty. Aristotle argues that a state can only endure when the middle class either holds the power of government or is a necessary partner in the ruling political coalition.

A significant amount of new research supports Aristotle’s position. Recent work has found that the presence of a strong middle class can positively impact the economic success of countries (Easterly, 2001), make countries more democratic (Barro, 1999), and enhance a country’s political stability (Huber, Rueschemeyer, & Stephens, 1993).

Yet developing and maintaining a strong middle class has been difficulty in modern society. Today much of the developed world is simultaneously experiencing large increases in economic inequality and severe erosions in the size of the middle class (Pressman, 2007; Birdsall, Graham, & Pettinato, 2000) .

The decline of the middle class and rise in equality can have significant social impact, including increases in violence, mental illness, and declining health (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2010) while also eroding social cohesion and promoting class conflict (Stiglitz, 2012).

In this paper, I will examine the impact that the decline in the middle class and rising inequality has had on educational outcomes. Recent research has found widening achievement gaps between the rich and the poor (Reardon, 2011), as well as an overall decline in educational mobility since the 1930s ( (Hout & Janus, 2011).

In this paper, I will examine the impacts that the decline in the middle class and the resulting inequality has had on educational outcomes in the United States. Using scores from the most recent National Assessment of Educational Program (NAEP), I will test whether states that have experienced the largest decline in their middle classes and/or have experienced the highest levels of inequality also have disproportionately lower NAEP scores.

Some of the research questions that I will examine include: Did states that experienced a decline in the size and/or prosperity of their middle classes fare worse on their NAEP assessments? How about states that have increasing levels of inequality? Do these developments also produce higher levels of variance in a state’s NAEP assessment results?

The results of this research may prove helpful in expanding our knowledge about the wide-ranging effects of economic inequality.