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The Two-Income Trap
by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagy
For most American, middle class families, being able to afford the basic needs -- home, transportation, food, and clothing, just to name a few -- means that both parents need to be working.
Even with two incomes, middle class families are still going broke. This is the reality of today’s American middle class family, according to “The Two-Income Trap,” published in 2003 by Basic Books and written by the mother-daughter team of Elizabeth Warren, Harvard Law School professor, and Amelia Warren Tyagi, commentator and co-founder of HealthAllies.
Elizabeth and Amelia co-wrote the book after years of research on how, in today’s economy, middle class families and single parents work hard and long hours until retirement, not to save but to provide the security of a good neighborhood, a quality education for their children and financial stability. With hard numbers, charts, and stories of the families they met throughout their research, they demonstrate how, even with two incomes, families are still struggling to make ends meet. They also explain that contrary to the common opinion, the strongest factor causing this crisis is not their consumerist habits, but the lack of government aid programs.
The book is filled with research results on economic issues like: the price of education, trying to compete in a two-income world, the family car, tuition freeze and the housing trap. In the section entitled The Over-Consumption Myth, they wrote: “Bad schools impose indirect-but huge-costs on millions of middle class families. In their desperate rush to save their children from failing schools, families are literally spending themselves into bankruptcy.” They also included advice on how to begin to address these problems on a legislative level. “Any policy that loosens the ironclad relationship between location-location-location and school-school-school would eliminate the need for parents to pay an inflated price for a home just because it happens to be within the boundaries of a desirable school district.”
The book could be a great source of information for any parent that finds his or herself at the end of the month wondering where their money went? Although it does not go into details on how to save on daily expenses, it shines a bright light on the many ways middle class families struggle throughout the United States and how, by working together with the American government, they can begin to create solutions.
Title: The Two-Income Trap
Author: Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagy
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465090907
Review written by: Agneris J. Medina
Reviewer's Rating:7
Reader's Rating: 0
Reader's Votes: 0
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