> In the US, you can trace all of these back to wages This seems to disregard the trememdous advances in all the fields of healthcare made in the last 40 years

> In the US, you can trace all of these back to wages This seems to disregard the trememdous advances in all the fields of healthcare made in the last 40 years. Treatments are readily available for diseases which were previously death sentences. Treatments that were prohibitively expensive in 1980 are cheaply available today. Once we factor this into our analysis I don't think anything has stagnated. > whose kids' only hope is to use college to boost themselves into an in demand career What about trade school? There's a shortage of construction labour and skilled trades throught the country. > have to sink a significant amount of money into their land purchase (house) to establish themselves, away from the rest of their family I don't recally anyone being forced to buy houses. Plenty of folks raise families in apartments. I myself was raised in one. Yes when you live in a metropolis you can't afford as much space. And? > and now the number of people that are coupled up is around half in my family and friends, and those with kids by mid 30s is even lower, maybe a third. And how much of this would you attribute to people making different choices and having different priorities? How would you control for people's willingness to be poorer and still have children?