Homeowners typically have their monthly mortgage costs already set. Their wealth — the value of their home — has risen a bit in two years. The median sale price for a home in the United States was $214,000 in November 2016, according to data from Zillow, and the national appreciation rate since then implies such a house would now be worth $230,000.

Things are trickier for a renter looking to buy a home, because of rising mortgage rates. A side effect of the surging economy and deficit-increasing tax cuts has been higher rates, which means that even though home prices aren’t up all that much in the last two years, the cost for a buyer needing credit is considerably higher.

The rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 3.5 percent at election time two years ago, and is now 4.83 percent. Combined with the rise in the price of the median home, a middle-income American family looking to buy with 20 percent down would be looking at a monthly mortgage payment that is $196 a month higher now than in November 2016, wiping out gains from higher wages and lower taxes.

A market boom for a few, and higher interest rates for others

The Trump administration has pointed to the booming stock market as evidence of success: The Standard & Poor’s 500 index has returned about 29 percent, including reinvested dividends, since November 2016.

But middle-income families typically have minimal direct exposure to the stock market. Their financial holdings tend to be modest at best, meaning that rising stock prices create only a small wealth increase.

Among middle-income families in 2016, only 52 percent held stocks either directly or indirectly, such as through a mutual fund. And of those 52 percent, median stock holdings were only $15,000. (That would be up to around $19,000 now if they left the money in an S.&P. 500 index fund since then without making further contributions.)

Stock investments are much more a feature of upper-income brackets. The same survey showed that 94.7 percent of families in the top 10 percent of income held stocks, with a median value of $363,400.