The writer is co-chief of KKR’s Americas Private Equity business and founder of Ownership Works

My story used to be a familiar one. I’m a first-generation college graduate from a hardworking, blue-collar family. My parents scrimped and saved and made a small real estate investment. While we lived day to day on my Dad’s construction job wages, owning an appreciating asset brought us into the middle class. Today, not enough families enjoy the upward mobility that mine did.

Property ownership is one of the few ways of climbing the economic ranks. But with real wages largely stagnant since the 1970s, many people have no savings to invest. Another way to get hold of appreciating assets is by being given stocks in the company where you work, but that is a perk typically reserved for only the most senior employees.