It takes now 53 weeks salary to earn same as 30 weeks in 1985
The title isn&#x27;t supported by the underlying data. The key chart in the Tweet thread is this: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;oren_cass&#x2F;status&#x2F;1230505794686373888&#x2F;photo&#x2F;1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;oren_cass&#x2F;status&#x2F;1230505794686373888&#x2F;pho...</a><p>This looks at &quot;major household expenditures&quot; versus &quot;median male income.&quot; Right off the bat, that should be a red flag--why are we looking at just male income? The percentage of women working since 1985 has only increased a little bit. But women&#x27;s wages have gone up 50% adjusted for inflation.<p>Of course, when women have been bringing more money into the family, people will spend more. For example, the chart shows expenditure on housing increasing. But the average American house today has twice as much square footage per person than in 1985: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;azgolfhomes.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2016&#x2F;07&#x2F;American-Enterprise-Institute-Housing-Data.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;azgolfhomes.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2016&#x2F;07&#x2F;American-...</a>. Expenditures on housing are increasing--but the number of vehicles per household has also gone up since 1985. The cost of college has gone up, but the percentage of people attending college has also doubled in that time frame. Colleges, moreover, are far more luxurious than in 1985. (The community college where my mother in law works now has far nicer facilities than Georgia Tech did when I attended just 15 years ago.) College itself has become something of a luxury consumption good--with large numbers of young people attending, drinking and having fun for four years, but getting degrees of questionable utility.<p>There are a lot of sound bites (and Twitter-level analysis) on this subject, but it&#x27;s actually extremely hard to figure out how to precisely measure changes in standard of living over time. For example, even just looking at the &quot;median&quot; is misleading. In 1990, when I came to America, the percentage of foreign-born people was 7%. Today it&#x27;s double that. Even in an economy that provides tremendous upwards mobility for immigrants, doubling the share of the immigrant population is going to make the median income seem lower. The median household is also much smaller than in 1985, and less likely to be comprised of married couples. Since 1985, the percentage of people 18-34 living with a spouse has decreased by 2&#x2F;3. (That observation is particularly significant because the percentage of women participating in the workforce hasn&#x27;t changed significantly since then.)<p>Accounting for these differences is important. When people think of the &quot;median&quot; they think they&#x27;re comparing like with like. &quot;Two-income middle class American-born family with two kids in 1985 versus 2015.&quot; They don&#x27;t think you&#x27;re comparing a married young couple from 1985, where both spouses work and share household expenses, to unmarried individuals maintaining two separate households in 2015. But unless you account for changing demographics, that&#x27;s exactly what you&#x27;re doing.