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 earlier 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 proportion 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.

In another survey released last month by Pew and the Gallup organization, a majority of 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.

¢ Goods and services that didn’t exist a few decades ago – such as high-definition televisions, high-speed Internet and cable or satellite subscriptions – have become commonplace consumer items.

¢ The costs of many of the anchors of a middle-class lifestyle – not just housing, but medical care and a college education – have increased more sharply than inflation.

¢ With their rising expenses, middle-income Americans have taken on more debt, often borrowing against homes that, at least until recently, had been rising rapidly in value.

¢ have no doubt that the recent rise in gasoline and food prices, higher home prices, slower wage growth and debt payments all hindered people’s ability to save. But this savings slide has been going on for decades. The truth is when times were good, people who could save still didn’t.

Now that times are bad, families are worried, according to the Pew survey released in April.

Slightly more than half of middle-class respondents said they’ve had to reduce their spending in the past year, and they expect to have to continue these cutbacks in the year ahead. A quarter of the people in this same group said they expected to have trouble paying their bills. And about a quarter of the middle class who are employed worried that they could lose their jobs.

How much are people saving when they do put money away?

On average, as a country we are saving less than 1 percent of our incomes.

I am not – like many people – bemoaning the economic downturn. I think in one respect, it’s a good thing. It’s what this consumer-driven, debt-laden country needed. Far too many people when their incomes were good and their employment was stable put off saving. You can’t always save enough to stave off every crisis, but even a small rainy-day fund can help you get through some financial storms.

So this is what it takes – tough economic times – to remind folks that putting money away isn’t just something you know you should do. It’s something you desperately need to do.