Using recent polling results, this book identifies the core economic components of the American Dream: standard of living, financial security, and upward mobility. The authors document the trend in each of these components over the last thirty years, using figures (trend lines and bar charts) based upon the best available data. Collectively, this evidence has alarming implications for the economic fate of those at the bottom of the nation's income distribution. For that group, as the authors show, the American Dream is dying.

Scratch at the surface of the myriad economic diagrams, and the picture that emerges is far from dry. . . . McClelland and Tobin argue, with an abundance of caution, that data such as these put the very concept of a vibrant American dream in jeopardy. . . . [This book] should make it onto the required reading lists of the country's economic and anti-poverty policy-makers. * The American Prospect *
This timely book makes accessible to the general public statistical data on changes in income distribution in the US from 1947 to the first decade of this century, and it documents the percentage decline in the income and wages among the poorest 20 percent of the population over this period. . . . Highly recommended. General readers; students at all levels; faculty, researchers, and professionals. * Choice Reviews *
This book sounds an alarm that needs to be heard in the halls of Congress and across the nation. American Dream Dying tells us that the least fortunate citizens are at risk for losing what little they have, perhaps never to be recovered. We cannot afford to ignore this diagnosis. -- Katherine Newman, Princeton University

Peter D. McClelland is emeritus professor of economics at Cornell University and the author and editor of numerous books, including The State of Americans: This Generation and the Next, The American Search for Economic Justice, and Crisis in the Making; The Political Economy of New York State since 1945. Peter Tobin is a Ph.D. candidate in engineering and applied science at Yale University.