Among the sillier bits of political rhetoric is the bipartisan nonsense that "working families" is a synonym for low-income or middle-income families. (For a Bush example click here; for a Kerry example click here or here.)

As my colleague Wilson Mixon and I wrote in 2001 piece for Ideas on Liberty, it is actually high income families that work the most hours. Using 1997 data from a Heritage Foundation study, we found that average weekly household hours of work by quintile were 12.8, 32.5, 46.2, 64.5, and 74.3. Hence, families in the highest quintile work about 2.25 times the hours that a family in the 2nd quintile works and 1.6 times the hours that a family in the 3rd quintile works. (I presume that the 2nd and 3rd quintiles contain the politicians' "working families.") Of course this shouldn't come as a great surprise--after all, more hours of work generally lead to higher income.

ADDENDUM: Bruce Bartlett dissects the "middle-class squeeze" nonsense.

UPDATE: For a more recent Heritage Foundaton analysis of income distribution measurement issues, click here. Hat tip to Heritage's Andrew Grossman.