The cost of living has grown exponentially faster than wages over the past 50 years.
The fastest way for household income to grow is through marriage / dual incomes.
The fastest way for household income to drop is through single parents/divorces.
It's all about resources.
It didn't matter how much I wanted to help the kids in the program when they went home to nothing. I only saw them for an hour every week. They gotta live there every day. The difference between the school they went to and the school my nephews and niece went to was night and day. There are folks in jail right now for using the wrong zip code to get their kid into a better school.
Combine financial illiteracy, cultural conditioning, social engineering, economic oppression, etc. and there's a permanent underclass of folks on which the upper class (or those that feel they are) can stand, point down, and laugh, while hollering about bootstraps and handouts
This isn't a bug, it's a feature.