Middle America is experiencing the most severe financial hardship for more than five decades, a Harvard University academic has claimed.

According to research compiled over the past three years, American families who earn between $60,000 (£30,200) and $180,000 a year are in the worst financial squeeze since the 1950s, with soaring health insurance costs, the housing recession, rising childcare fees and the increasing likelihood of caring for an elderly parent.

US census figures last year showed that 55 million American families took home just over $69,000.

William Fitzsimmons, the Dean of admissions and financial aid at Harvard, said that the university had become anxious about why students from middle-income families appeared to be less likely to apply to the Ivy League institution than those from poor or wealthy families.

He said: “We started to ask why these students weren’t applying to us and we found that families with a household income of between $60,000 and $180,000 have really been under the gun on a daily basis. They have been forced to cope with very high housing costs - families who bought a house three or four years ago now find themselves with a mortgage worth more than the property. Even though many of these families have two incomes, it often means they have high childcare costs. The biggest driver has been the rising cost of healthcare premiums.”

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the US health policy group, the cost of health insurance in the US rose by 86.5 per cent between 2000 and 2006, more than four times the rate of average earnings increases.

Edward Wolff, a professor of economics at New York University, said that the financial hardship experienced by Middle America had worsened rapidly during the Bush Administration.

“Since 2001, average real wages have fallen and as a consequence median incomes, which include income from savings and social security, have also decreased,” he said. “Americans have been trying to keep up with their usual consumption by taking money out of their homes. Up until this year when the housing market fell, they have been able to use their home as an ATM, and household debt has really zoomed up since 2001.”

Times Recommends

• Darling under pressure on record public debt
• Mortgage drought deepens on 32% lending fall
• Oil prices firm after 10% drop to below $130