Grill doesn't have a nanny for her baby and toddler, as many of her friends do. Instead of a $10,000-a-year private preschool, she enrolled her 3-year-old in a local cooperative, which costs $150 a month. The family doesn't eat out much, and she shops at discount stores like Old Navy.

"I'm a stay-at-home mom and have two kids, a dog and a nice house in an OK neighborhood in West L.A. But it's nothing awesome," said Grill, who moved to Los Angeles from Pittsburgh for her husband's work in the entertainment industry. "My husband makes $150,000 a year. In Pittsburgh, we would have something great for that."

She has also noticed more of a disparity in California between rich and poor compared with her hometown. In Pittsburgh, "there's a clear upper, middle, and lower class," she said. "Here, it seems like that extreme of people living in these multimillion homes and they want their kids to go to a nice school, or it's people who rent who moved here to try to make it in L.A., and most of them end up leaving because it's too expensive."

The disparity is real and it is growing. According to U.S. census data, the bottom half of the population of Southern California took in 18.6 percent of all the income generated in the region, while the top 3.5 percent households making $200,000 or more took in almost as much: 17.6 percent, according to economist John Husing.

In the early 2000s, the richest 20 percent of families had average incomes 7.6 times as large as the poorest 20 percent of families. That is up from a ratio of 5.7 in the early 1980s. This growth in income inequality was the 16th largest in the nation, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

"What strikes me is how lonely it is in the middle of the income distribution," said DanielFlaming. He said the collapse of the aerospace industry in the late 1980s and early 1990s precipitated the shrinking of the middle class in Southern California, with nothing specific to replace that.

Jack Kyser, chief economist at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., blames a lack of leadership. "There is no economic development strategy for the county of Los Angeles or the city of Los Angeles. Long Beach is working on one."

He said a staff member from gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides' office called him to review a speech the candidate was delivering about rebuilding the middle class. "But guess what," Kyser said he told him. "You left out one vital part helping firms create middle-class jobs."

He said Southern California is struggling to provide work-force quality. One problem is the lack of industrial arts in schools to pave a way for some students to prepare for a vocational career.

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