Moral of Downturn Story: Piggies Must Be Fed

What will it take to make Americans save more?

Survey after survey continues to point out the obvious: U.S. households are keeping very little of their incomes.

A new analysis of the habits and attitudes about saving in America found that most people know they're not saving as much as they should. But they aren't concerned enough to do a darn thing about it, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center's Social & Demographic Trends project.

Three out of four Americans say they aren't saving enough, according to the telephone survey of 2,413 adults conducted this year.

Even the country's wealthiest acknowledge they aren't saving enough, the survey found. Six in 10 adults (61 percent) with family incomes of $150,000 or more say they aren't putting away enough for the future. Among those earning between $100,000 and$150,000 a year, the number increases to 79 percent.

This nationwide "savings shortfall," as Pew dubbed it, is the majority situation in virtually every key demographic group -- rich and poor, male and female, black and white.

"While uneasiness about savings is broadly felt, these feelings apparently don't run deeply enough to motivate action," wrote Richard Morin, senior editor for the Pew project and former Washington Post polling director.

In another survey released last month by Pew and the Gallup organization, most respondents said they hadn't improved their financial lives in the past five years. Twenty-five percent said they hadn't moved forward while 31 percent said they had fallen backward.

This is "the most downbeat" assessment of Americans' financial progress in nearly half a century of polling by both organizations.

Part of the pessimism comes from the fact that for the past two decades, middle-income Americans have been spending more and borrowing more. Here's why, according to Pew:

¿ Homes are nearly 60 percent more expensive (in inflation-adjusted dollars) now than in the mid-1980s.