Eighteen-year-old Alex Ray recently decided he would wait on attending a four-year college and instead spend his first year at a local community college. His father, Tom Ray, a 47- year-old information-technology project manager who only recently regained a wage cut his employer imposed during the recession, praised his son for a "very mature" choice that he estimated would save $20,000.
Falling Birthrate
Fewer children are being brought into the world; the birthrate in Montgomery County, where Dayton is located, has fallen every year since 2007, in keeping with a national trend. Even the rituals of death have changed.
To save money, families are increasingly choosing cremation over burial, said Anne Dunbar, co-owner of a funeral home in the Dayton suburb of Springfield. Others are forgoing memorial services for simple graveside ceremonies. Rather than flowers or donations to a charity, 15 to 20 families a year now ask that newspaper obituaries include a plea for contributions toward funeral expenses, she said.
'The Real Majority'
The challenges facing residents in this Ohio city about 60 miles north of Cincinnati have been emblematic of the issues that have moved centrist swing voters ever since the 1970 publication of "The Real Majority," a top-selling political analysis. Authors Richard Scammon and Ben Wattenberg created a mythical 47-year-old Dayton housewife to argue that her most pressing concerns had the potential to turn presidential elections.
Today, the most pressing concern for Lisa Meeks, 47, is making herself "more marketable" to potential employers. Meeks, who left her pre-school teaching position because her hours were reduced, now rides the bus to Sinclair Community College in the morning and then boards another bus to get to her new job, working the evening shift as a call-center manager.
"I'm still seeing people struggling," said Meeks. "You hear people saying, 'I've put in four job applications and I haven't heard anything back. What am I doing wrong?'"
Though the scale is greater, the workplace shifts that Dayton and the rest of the country are seeing parallel the Bush- era job trends that Obama criticized four years ago, when he said that during President Bill Clinton's administration "the average American family saw its income go up $7,500 instead of go down $2,000, like it has under George Bush."
Stopping Downturn