ARE WE BETTER OFF?

MASSACHUSETTS GOVERNOR WILLIAM Weld is puzzled. State unemployment is falling, and incomes are rising. Yet in the State of the State message he delivered two weeks ago, the Republican Governor dwelt on the "insecurity people feel in their work lives and about their futures." Said Weld: "Many of you have wondered, 'When are things going to get better for me and my family?'"

Bill Clinton is puzzled. He would love to open his re-election campaign by bragging about low inflation, low interest rates and 7.8 million new jobs since he took office. But his advisers warn that in all 50 states many voters feel that prosperity is only for the rich and would resent any excessive White House happy talk. The aides' advice as Clinton prepared his State of the Union speech: Claim only a promising start on righting the economy. Stress that much remains to be done.

Professional economists are puzzled: more and more their numbers don't seem to add up. Wages for the typical worker have fallen behind price increases ever since the early 1970s, and the trend has continued during the Clinton years. Yet in every way that can be measured, from ownership of color-TV sets to the numbers of people vacationing in Europe, Americans are living much better than two decades ago. True, the prosperity is far from equally shared. But that raises another question: What kind of economy is it in which the numbers of both the highest-earning and lowest-earning people are expanding while the middle class is shrinking?

Ordinary citizens are perhaps most puzzled of all. Rising standards of living, to many, mean largely an increase in the number of things they "must" buy. This is not just crass materialism; many of the new musts are not goods but services--medical insurance, day care for young children, college tuition for teenagers--that have rocketed in price. Small wonder that so many people feel they are working harder and harder just to keep up.

"I'm just surviving, I'm not succeeding," says Aurelio ("Lio") Maldonado, a Chicago bill collector. He, his wife Rita, a legal secretary, son Adrian, 6, and daughter Clarissa, 5 months, make up the classic family of four, and their income of $44,000--a bit more than half earned by Rita--is smack in the middle nationally. Their three-bedroom home in the Westlawn neighborhood is comfortable, but the $860 monthly mortgage payments and $300 a month owed on the family's 1992 Firebird eat up about a third of their earnings. The couple would like to keep Adrian in the Roman Catholic school system but cannot because first-grade tuition would be $2,500 a year. After attending a Catholic kindergarten, Adrian is a first-grader in a public school that his father says is "not the kind of environment anyone would want for their kids." Rita's parents now baby-sit for Clarissa while her mother works, but the grandparents plan to move to Texas in a year or two, and the Maldonados will somehow have to scrape up the money for day care. Says Lio: "Rita would love to stay home with our daughter, but we have to combine both salaries to make ends meet."