Household income growth during the Obama administration (2009-2013) has trailed that of both the Clinton (1993-2001) and Reagan (1981-1989) administrations, according to a new study from Georgetown University economist Robert Shapiro.

Aggregate median household income was $49,063 in 1979, $49,515 in 1992, $56,814 in 2000, $56,177 at the end of the 2002-07 expansion and $51,816 in 2013. According to these data, the average household earned just $2,753 more in 2013 than in 1979, a 5.6 percent gain in 34 years.

But the age-cohort data showed, for example, that the median income of households headed by people who were ages 25-to-29 in 1982 increased from $45,440 to $60,580 in the 1982-1989 expansion, and from $61,817 to $76,874 in the 1992-2000 expansion — gains of 69 percent over 18 years — and then fell by $3,389 in the 2002-2007 expansion and by $9,396 more in the first four years of this expansion.

"Income progress was broad and robust through the Reagan and Clinton years and stopped abruptly during the Bush and Obama administrations," the report states.

Most households saw their income stay steady or decline from 2002 to 2013. The only exceptions were households headed by college graduates and those headed by people in their 20s.

The average household was hurt by the technology revolution that put a premium on highly educated workers and the economy's globalization, which pushed wages down for less-skilled workers, according to Shapiro.

He notes that "our current problems with incomes are neither a long-term feature of the U.S. economy nor merely an after-effect of the 2008-2009 financial upheaval. Our analysis further shows that these problems also are not driven by economic impediments based on gender, race and ethnicity, or even education."

Meanwhile, non-farm business productivity has averaged growth of only 1.3 percent since the recession ended in June 2009 and shrank 2.2 percent annualized in the fourth quarter.

That's not good news for the economy. Some economists have cut their first-quarter GDP growth forecasts to as low as 1.5 percent, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The Journal's Greg Ip notes that "economic growth shows few signs of breaking out of the 2 to 2.5 percent range" in which it has fluctuated since the recession ended. GDP expanded 2.4 percent last year.

The economy's total inventory of capital — equipment, software and buildings — per worker has advanced only 0.3 percent annually this decade, the least in at least 40 years, Chris Varvares, managing director of Macroeconomic Advisers, tells the paper.

One luminary who is quite concerned about productivity is former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, "We have zero productivity growth in the last couple of years," he tells CNBC. "If you don't get productivity right, your economy is in trouble."

Business investment is a problem, Greenspan also tells CNBC. "Capital investment is key to productivity growth. That has slowed down quite dramatically, and productivity has followed right along."

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