I didn't see the show, but it would be interesting to take some percentages of things like affordable housing, home ownership, poverty, nutrition, and affordable health care as trend items rather than single out a small sample size. I would suspect things are not all that bad, but could be proven wrong. There have been some boom years and bust years over the last few decades and things seem to go in cycles rather than an overall decline.

I think the "American Dream" is a moving target with higher standards now than a couple or few decades ago when the average home size was much smaller and cell phones, computers, internet, and cable TV didn't exist.