. >> cheryl: joining me in the studio is economist sarah bohn. she is a policy fellow at public policy institute of california and she co-authored a study called "the great depression and distribution of income in california." thank you for being here. the study is so impressive. why did you do it? >> as you know, middle and low income families have been struggling for a long time, not just because of the recession but over the decades. we wanted to quantify how family income was faring in the state of california and in particular what the recession did to impact the distribution of income. we found there were serious impacts. as the study noted reduced living in california with size of the middle-class is the smallest in 30 years and the gap between rich and poor and families in help twice as much it was in 1980. >> reporter: this must have been a monster task for you? >> we used publicly available based on surveys from census ces bureau. we got the data and over the course of about a year and a half, we tried to arrive at the metrics that were