Word: paychecks
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What's the reason the typical household has more money to spend, while the typical paycheck has failed to grow? There's now a second breadwinner in the house. Couples have also let up on babymaking (the rate dropped from 18.4 births per 1,000 people in 1970 to 16 in 1992), so there are fewer mouths that need braces and not as many teenage phone bills to finance. More workers with fewer dependents makes for more income per family...
...Americans in general are better off than they were 25 years ago, why all the Depression rhetoric about hard times and strapped budgets? Levy thinks the answer lies in the sluggish paycheck. It's not like the post-World War II period, when the nation's income doubled. Families are living comfortably, and working long hours to do it, but short of turning polygamous in the interest of a third paycheck, they don't see much hope of getting ahead from here...
Here's the state of the economy in the typical U.S. household: the principal breadwinner (let's say it's a he) brings home the same paycheck he was bringing home in 1970, when Richard Nixon was President and the Grateful Dead had hair. He may think he's got raises, but when you subtract for inflation, he hasn't. Yet his family is better off than it was in 1970, with 20% more buying power...
What's the reason the typical household has more money to spend, while the typical paycheck has failed to grow? There's now a second breadwinner in the house. Couples have also let up on babymaking (the rate dropped from 18.4 births per 1,000 people in 1970 to 16 in 1992), so there are fewer mouths that need braces and not as many teenage phone bills to finance. More workers with fewer dependents makes for more income per family...
...Americans in general are better off than they were 25 years ago, why all the Depression rhetoric about hard times and strapped budgets? Levy thinks the answer lies in the sluggish paycheck. It's not like the post-World War II period, when the nation's income doubled. Families are living comfortably, and working long hours to do it, but short of turning polygamous in the interest of a third paycheck, they don't see much hope of getting ahead from here...