Series: Success Factors

In the last of a three-part series, All Things Considered talks with several North Carolinians who are living in poverty, but aspire to the middle class. Hard work is key to a better life, they say — but it's not easy to keep moving up the ladder.

In the second of a three-part series, All Things Considered asks several Americans with incomes solidly in the mid-five figures why they feel they've landed on the middle of the nation's economic ladder.

Class, wealth and personal responsibility have dominated much of the national conversation throughout the presidential election. In the first of a three-part series, All Things Considered asks several wealthy Americans with very different perspectives how they account for their own economic prosperity.