Not Keeping Up With Our Parents

How stagnant wages, debt, and escalating costs for tuition, health care, and home ownership are jeopardizing today’s educated middle classDrawing on more than a hundred interviews with diverse families across America, Nan Mooney explores the financial struggles of today’s professional middle class, delving into their sense of economic security and their plans for and fears about the future.Mooney shows how profoundly middle class expectations and realities have shifted: college tuition has increased 35 percent in the past five years; only 18 percent of middle class families have three months’ income saved, and 90 percent of those filing for bankruptcy are middle class. Additionally, the share of family income devoted to “fixed costs”—housing, childcare, health insurance, and taxes—has climbed from 53 percent to 75 percent in the past two decades, and raising one child through age eighteen costs $237,000 for a middle-income family. Despite this sobering reality, Mooney offers proactive and concrete ideas on how individuals and society can stop this downward spiral. She advocates improving government-backed education, healthcare, and childcare programs as well as drawing on successful models from individual states and other countries.