Growing Class Gap in New Jersey

From the Star Ledger:

Flight of the white middle class creates a split between have-a-lots and have-nots

New Jersey remains the nation's wealthiest state, but its population is increasingly divided along lines of race and class as lower- and middle-income whites leave in growing numbers.

The findings come from a voluminous array of U.S. Census information released yesterday. The most comprehensive sampling in five years documents trends in income, immigration, commuting and race.
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The income gap between races is partly explained by an exodus of white lower- and middle-class families, according to an analysis by The Star-Ledger.

That white migration included folks like Paul and Patricia Wiedemann, who faced a difficult decision when Patricia retired three years ago.
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They preferred to stay in Clinton Township, where they lived near two grown children and five grandchildren, but they feared the high cost of living and taxation would someday erode all their savings.

The couple moved to Delaware, where they are paying about $800 a year in property taxes, compared with the $8,400 they were paying when they left. They soon learned that many of their neighbors in the senior development where they settled also were recent arrivals from New Jersey.

"There was no incentive to stay in New Jersey," Paul Wiedemann said. "If you've got money and you're working, you can swing it. If you retire, the only way to stay is if you're wealthy."
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James Hughes, dean of Rutgers' Bloustein School for Planning and Public Policy, said some of the middle-income whites got raises that bumped them up to the next earning category. But many simply moved away.

"With the bursting of the telecommunications bubble and downsizing, we had a lot of people moving for economic reasons," Hughes said. "Some simply moved across state lines for lower taxes; still others were fleeing diversity. Then you had retirees cashing out of the housing boom."
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"The real danger would be the hollowing out of middle New Jersey," he said. "That has potential implications for the economy, because corporations expand where there is the diverse labor force they want."
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"The housing crisis is affecting everyone, from the professional who has a choice of jobs in New Jersey or a lower-cost state to the single mother struggling to make ends meet," agreed Arnold Cohen of the Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey.