Rising income inequality is starting to hit home for many American households as they run short of places to reach for a few extra bucks.
As the gap between the rich and poor widened over the last three decades, families at the bottom found ways to deal with the squeeze on earnings. Housewives joined the workforce. Husbands took second jobs and labored longer hours. Homeowners tapped into the rising value of their properties to borrow money to spend.
Those strategies finally may have run their course as women's participation in the labor force has peaked and the bursting of the house-price bubble has left many Americans underwater on their mortgages.
"We've exhausted our coping mechanisms," said Alan Krueger, an economics professor at Princeton University in New Jersey and former chairman of President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers. "They weren't sustainable."
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