My thanks to Elizabeth for her kind post (which I read just after flying into D.C., where I am doing a series of talks on the book -- for those interested, I will be at the New America Foundation at noon on Wednesday and Politics and Prose at 7:30PM the same day).  She reports one finding of my research—that the chance of major family income drops for people with average demographic characteristics has increased dramatically.  

In fact, the numbers are more worrisome than Elizabeth's post suggests. I updated the calculations for the book, and found that the chance of a 50 percent or greater income drop had increased from around 7 percent in the early 1970s to roughly 17 percent in 2002. (The graphic is available on the Washington Monthly’s blog here.)