Economic Recovery Fails to Ease Financial Stress on U.S. Households

DS News reports that the Economic Recovery Fails to Ease Financial Stress on U.S. Households. So what is a better indicator of the health of the US Economy, the stock market or the health or US households? Is this a better indicator on how retail operations and performance of retail properties are going to be in the near future?  Is this what I was talking about during the holidays that it didn't feel like a recovery and I had a sense that people where spending money they didn't have over the holidays, not because they were feeling better about the economy, but because they were tired of not spending money and almost didn't care?  Or, was that just me?