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> In summary, people have made the choice to have more money instead of having one parent stay home. Not really, disposable income has gone down, savings have
by foobarqux 12y ago
> In summary, people have made the choice to have more money instead of having one parent stay home.
Not really, disposable income has gone down, savings have gone down, while health insurance and mortgage payments (for roughly equivalent housing) have gone up.
It looks like having two earners is more out of necessity than preference for the middle class.
- harryh 12y agoMedian house size has increase DRAMATICALLY over the past 50 years. https://www.census.gov/const/C25Ann/sftotalmedavgsqft.pdf https://www.census.gov/const/C25Ann/sftotalmedavgsqft.pdf
- foobarqux 12y agoI was citing mortgage costs for equivalent sized housing.
- harryh 12y agoIs that actually up on an inflation adjusted basis?
- foobarqux 12y agoYes
- harryh 12y agoFWIW some casual web searching says that's not true. shrug
- foobarqux 12y agohttps://youtu.be/akVL7QY0S8A?t=20m28s https://youtu.be/akVL7QY0S8A?t=20m28s
- harryh 12y agoShe doesn't say that it's for equivalent sized housing. As I said square footage per person has increased DRAMATICALLY over the past 50 years.
- foobarqux 12y agoShe uses # rooms as equivalent, not sq-foot. Maybe sq-footage has increased, but your data is about new housing across all economic classes and we are interested in median middle class housing. Besides the problem of data skew (richer people live in bigger houses), Warren claims that most of the middle class live in old homes, not new ones. She specifically says that new homes are being built for upper middle class and above.
- harryh 12y agoThe chart I linked to way above was for median housing.
- foobarqux 12y agoIt was median new housing developments. Not the housing of a median family, nor the housing of a median middle class family. Again, Warren's claim is that median middle class families live in old homes. And even if they didn't median middle class homes are potentially smaller than median homes.