Real income per household member rose to $22,966 in 2003 from $16,420 in 1983 (in 2003 dollars)--a 40% gain.

http://www.cato.org/events/powerpoin...441_graph7.pdf

Here is the link to the Cato institute rebutle to the Pew article:

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8274

Here is a good quote about this from the article:

"The Pew-Brookings paper claims we face "rapidly growing income inequality" because "the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) finds that between 1979 and 2004, the real after-tax income of the poorest one-fifth of Americans rose by 9 percent, that of the richest one-fifth by 69 percent, and that of the top 1 percent by 176 percent."

What happened for several years after 1979 was dominated by horrific inflationary recessions from 1980 to 1982. From 1988 to 2004, by contrast, the CBO says the poorest one-fifth saw their share of after-tax income rise from 2.7 percent to 3.4 percent, while that of the top fifth fell from 59.3 percent to 57 percent and the share of the top 1 percent was unchanged, at 13.4 percent.

On the day of Mrs. Clinton's speech, Brookings Institution senior fellow Ron Haskins wrote about "The Rise of the Bottom Fifth" in The Washington Post. He noted that from 1991 to 2005, the real earnings among the bottom fifth of families with children increased "by 80 percent, compared with around 50 percent for the highest-income group and around 20 percent for each of the other three groups."

Trust me, I grew up in the 60's and 70's. I came from a poor family of 7 kids. We're far better off today than we were then. If there is a problem, it is the inability of people today to save. Too many "necessities".