"Government assistance for families whose incomes flutter just above the poverty line nearly doubled from 1983 to 2004... The numbers look very different for those scraping along at the bottom, generally unemployed single mothers with children. Their benefits declined in real terms by about one-third."

"In the late 1960s, more than half [53%] of the households in the United States were squarely in the middle, earning, in today's dollars, $35,000 to $100,000 a year... But since 2000, the middle-class share of households has continued to narrow [to 43%], the main reason being that more people have fallen to the bottom."