Did America's Have-Nots Double in 20 Years?

By Larry Elder

Thirty-four percent of Americans say they belong to the "have-nots." Twenty years ago, only 17 percent of Americans defined themselves this way. What happened?

Apparently party affiliation, race and self-perception play a greater role than one's actual economic condition. The Pew Research Center, the organization conducting the poll, writes that one arrives at this belief, " . . . whether grounded in objective facts or not. . . . Analysis of polling data over the years," writes Pew, "also strongly suggests that the growing perception of societal divide is driven as much by political factors as by economic ones." Read on.