Higher home values and investment portfolios helped boost household net worth by $1.3 trillion to $74.8 trillion in the second quarter, the Fed reported Sept. 25. Net worth is $6.7 trillion above its pre-recession peak reached in the third quarter of 2007.

“The rise in wealth masks a lot of disparity,” LaVorgna said. “Not everybody has partaken in this recovery. That’s one of the reasons the economy has not performed as well as everyone would have liked.”

Median household income has fallen every year for the past five after adjusting for inflation, according to data from the Census Bureau, with Americans earning no more than they did in 1996. The share of people making between $35,000 and $100,000 a year has declined over the same period, while those earning more than $200,000 has grown to 4.5 percent from 3.3 percent.

Economists say one great aid to mobility -- college and jobs training -- is becoming out of reach for more Americans as costs skyrocket. Seventy-four percent of students at the most selective U.S. institutions were from high-status families as measured by income and education, according to a 2004 report from Anthony Carnevale and Stephen Rose of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.

About 10 percent came from the bottom half of the status scale. The lack of socioeconomic diversity trumped even the lack of racial and ethnic diversity, the study found.

Educational Opportunities

Making education more accessible is one rare point of agreement for policy makers. Last year, Senators Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, and Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, formed the Economic Mobility Caucus to explore bipartisan policies to promote opportunity and, as Moran put it, the American Dream. The caucus has only three members.

Lawmakers can’t agree on basic safety-net programs such as funding for food stamps let alone bridge ideological divisions to promote mobility, said Elisabeth Jacobs, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former policy advisor to the Joint Economic Committee in Congress.

The 2010 Affordable Care Act is the latest example of that fundamental divide. During a 21-hour Senate filibuster last month, Texas Republican Ted Cruz blamed President Barack Obama’s signature health-care law for killing jobs and hurting workers’ chances to get ahead.

“Anyone in this country can achieve anything based on hard work, perseverance, and based on the content of your character,” Cruz said on the Senate floor. “The reason this Obamacare fight matters so much is that is imperiled right now.”

Others, including Krueger and Jacobs, say making health care more affordable will improve living standards for many people, boosting mobility.