The Two-income Trap ─ Why Middle-Class Parents Are (Still) Going Broke

Revolutionary when it was first published in 2003, The Two-Income Trap remains disturbingly relevant today. In this expose, Senator Elizabeth Warren and financial consultant Amelia Tyagi show that modern 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. 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. Now with a new introduction by the authors, Warren and Tyagi show why the usual remedieschild-support enforcement, subsidized daycare, and higher salaries for womenwon't solve the problem, and propose a set of innovative solutions, from rate caps on credit cards to open-access public schools, to restore security to the middle class.

Elizabeth Warren is the senior senator from Massachusetts, where she served as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Previously, she was the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and author or co-author of several books on finance and bankruptcy in America. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Amelia Warren Tyagi is the Co-founder and President of Business Talent Group. Previously, she worked as an Engagement Manager with McKinsey and Company, specializing in health care, insurance, and education, and is a co-founder of the successful healthcare start-up HealthAllies. The co-author of two best-selling books, including All Your Worth, Tyagi lives in Los Angeles, California.