We only thought we were getting wealthier

The Pew Research Center has a great new study out that adds to the growing consensus that things aren't so hunky-dory these days for large swaths of the U.S. population. With the title "Inside the Middle Class - Bad Times Hit the Good Life", it's not hard to figure out what the conclusions are - it's just a matter of severity.

The full report is 169 pages, but, after searching around a bit, this table caught my eye. Since the data for this series stops at 2004, one can only imagine how the numbers might look today after a few more years of housing market excess.
It wasn't so much of a "housing boom" as it was a "debt boom" and, again, the changes in the table above from 2004 to 2007 would probably knock your socks off.

Some of the key findings from the report:

1. Fewer Americans now than at any time in the past half century believe they're moving forward in life.
2. For decades, middle-income Americans had been making absolute progress while enduring relative decline. But since 1999, they have not made economic gains.
3. For the past two decades middle-income Americans have been spending more and borrowing more. Housing has been the key driver of both trends.
4. At a time when these borrow-and-spend habits have spread, Americans say it has become harder to sustain a middle-class lifestyle.

And to think that, when home prices were soaring just a few years ago, we all thought we were getting rich.