The Two Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents are Going Broke

Elizabeth Warren · Amelia Warren Tyagi

Aug 2004 · Harper Collins

About this ebook

In this revolutionary exposé, Harvard Law School bankruptcy expert Elizabeth Warren and financial consultant Amelia Tyagi show that today's middle-class parents are increasingly trapped by financial meltdowns. Astonishingly, sending mothers to work has made families more vulnerable to financial disaster than ever before. Today's two-income family earns 75% more money than its single-income counterpart of a generation ago, but has 25% less discretionary income to cover living costs. This is "the rare financial book that sidesteps accusations of individual wastefulness to focus on institutional changes," raved the Boston Globe. Warren and Tyagi reveal how the ferocious bidding war for housing and education has silently engulfed America's suburbs, driving up the cost of keeping families in the middle class. The authors show why the usual remedies-child-support enforcement, subsidized daycare, and higher salaries for women-won't solve the problem. But as the Wall Street Journal observed, "The book is brimming with proposed solutions to the nail-biting anxiety that the middle class finds itself in: subsidized day care, school vouchers, new bank regulation, among other measures." From Senator Edward M. Kennedy to Dr. Phil to Bill Moyers, The Two-Income Trap has created a sensation among economists, politicians, and families-all those who care about America's middle-class crisis.

About the author

Elizabeth Warren worked as an elementary school teacher, a lawyer, and a law professor at Harvard University. She is the senior senator from Massachusetts. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, she served as Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Her efforts to protect taxpayers, to hold Wall Street accountable, and to ensure tough oversight of both the Bush and Obama Administrations won praise from both sides of the aisle. The Boston Globe named her Bostonian of the Year in 2009 for her oversight efforts. She helped created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She is also the author of numerous books including All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan, The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke, and A Fighting Chance.