For the millions struggling to somehow make the American dream work for them, high housing costs, sky-high education prices, expensive childcare and the increased risks of forced layoffs are just some of the obstacles getting in their way. It’s all part of the picture painted by author Alissa Quart in her new book, "Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America." Quart writes of areas in the country where, “the poor tend to remain poor, having simply made the mistake of being born to the wrong parents … but for the middle class … stagnation is experienced as a great loss, as the end of the mobility and flexibility we saw in our parents lives. That mobility is so much a part of the American promise that losing it seems like a deep betrayal.”

Alissa Quart, also the executive editor of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, joined Jim Braude to discuss.