“The just one shall flourish like the palm tree,” promises the psalmist this Sunday, growing “like a cedar of Lebanon.” Hardworking U.S. families wish the economy would flourish and their household income would grow, but new data suggests otherwise. The recent economic downturn has erased nearly two decades of accumulated prosperity and has left the typical family with no more wealth in 2010.

The U.S. Federal Reserve this week released a report that sheds light on the precarious financial state of the American family and may help explain why the economic recovery has been slow to take hold. The Fed’s Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) for 2010 shows that the median value of income between 2007 and 2010 fell 7.7 percent, while median net worth plunged more than 38 percent.

While the numbers are already 18 months old, the survey illuminates problems that continue to slow the pace of the economic recovery. The Fed found that middle-class families had sustained the largest percentage losses in both wealth and income during the crisis, limiting their ability and willingness to spend.

“It fills in details to a picture that we already knew was quite ugly, and these details very much underscore that,” said Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “It makes clear how devastating this has been for the middle class.”

Sources: Articles by Mark Huffman for Consumer Affairs and Binyamin Appelbaum for the New York Times