In recent times it's still been sold to everyone as if it were equally obtainable and anyone who found themselves unable to get ahead despite their hard work was told it was their own fault and they should have tried tugging harder on their bootstraps.
I agree it's time we stop thinking about the American Dream the same way. We need to either accept that it'll be out of reach for many no matter how hard they try or we change things so that's no longer the case. We can't fix it as long as we continue to buy into the fantasy that it's not broken.
This is largely the result of 3 things, a giant shortfall of building where population growth has outpaced new home starts for 40 years, women joining the workforce in greater numbers since the 60s, and houses on average are much larger and feature more amenities.
In the most literal sense yes, of course the increase in dual income homeowners is because of a greater number of women joining the workforce. But that masks the true reality, which is that those families require two incomes to a lifestyle that used to be achievable with one.
It’s a result of the lack of affordability, not a cause.
Houses could only be priced such that a single income could buy them when most women did not work. Or nobody could buy them.
Once you have couples competing to buy that same housing stock, it becomes increasingly hard for a single income to compete and the price rises to match what the market can support.
> the price rises
ah, the swirling anonymity of "market forces"! These are all active decisions made by people, not forces of nature.
You're not wrong, of course, but it's worth looking at it from another angle. A house for a dual income family does not cost more to build than a house for a single income family. In a world where housing is considered more of a human right than an investment vehicle prices could have stayed low, more could be built, faster. Instead we live in a world where everyone must work more in order for their quality of life to stand still. I think it's permissible to be angry about that.
It doesn't take houses to be considered investment vehicles by anyone though for this to happen (even if some people do). Just more and cheaper money available to throw at the same things.
No such assumptions are necessary or intended. It doesn't make sense to assume working women produced nothing. I have no idea whether the construction industry took on more workers or not when women joined the workforce.
Regardless, most couples tend to buy one house, and two people's incomes can outbid one person's. That is all that it is necessary to assume.
For housing though, the economic unit is the household, not the individual, and land and location are not really affected by how much stuff we can produce. So housing costs will always occupy a large fraction of household wealth, no matter how wealthy we become.
Scarce examples would be homes in the best school district you can afford near the best job markets. Or the best doctors, tutors, etc. And if the majority of people opt to be in dual income households, then the price of even average products/services will rise so that single income households will have to settle for less.
Humans are status seeking, so stuff is not just stuff. People value obtaining products/services that others cannot afford. The most basic example of this is the common advice to “buy the cheapest home in the most expensive neighborhood”.
Meaning, if you want your kids to hang out with kids of parents who earn at least as much or more than you, then you bid up housing prices as much as you can to minimize the number of families under a give income level that can afford the homes in the school district.
> in fact there is much more stuff for us to buy with our money now, and in fact (all else equal) woman working may drive DOWN the price of good and services.
This is also true, and it did drive down the price of many goods and services, including the price of labor itself. But it can also be true that prices for average or below average product/service decline, and above average products/services to increase.
Probably not. If you're familiar at all with the history of women entering the workforce, it was driven largely by women wanting to have careers and professional fulfillment and not financial necessity.
Rosie the Riveter, etc.
Looking at the labor force participation rate for women, since 1950 it's gone from 1/3 to 2/3.
A lot of truth in this. I was raised in the 60's in a 3-BR house with 1 bath, a kitchen, and a living room. There were 5 of us including parents, in 850 sq ft, without central air in a climate that definitely needs it. My dad would come home from work and lay under the living room window air conditioner. We had 1 car, mom did odd jobs from home (ironing, cleaning, babysitting) and took care of us, and most other kids were in the same situation. A few moms worked but it was unusual. Quite a different living situation than most families today.
I think money "throughput" matters more than absolute money supply.
And there's a ridiculous amount of cognitive dissonance among the Boomers I've talked with on this topic. There was a real confidence in their feeling that things were just as hard back then and there's just as much opportunity today for people to work hard and buy a home.
In their defense: every single one of them, when we got the pen and paper out and did the math to show it's not even remotely close, were shocked.
Younger generations want to change things and think they are unique and special, older generations are like “nah you don’t get it just wait until you are older”.
Both are right to varying degrees and depending on the circumstances. But those seems like the default views, and it takes effort to see when they don’t apply.
Hell, there's plenty within cities [1].
[1] https://escholarship.org/content/qt5gc6w0vd/qt5gc6w0vd_noSpl...
That's called cost-push inflation, and is an invalid theory. Inflation comes from government running the money printing press overtime.
Meanwhile, the government will blame inflation on greedy corporate profiteers and excessive wage demands by workers. Oh, and the oil companies.
That's exactly what happens in Argentina.
The democrats are following the steps of Juan Domingo Perón.
This is just basic market economics.
If anyone wants to understand what effective economic policy is read Ha-Joon Chang’s work.
Wages are a good compromise they can all agree on.
Nah, don't think so.
We went from multigenerational homes and kids living with their parents, inheriting their houses, and if buying -- doing it after they grew up and saved / got help to buy their own house. To a situation where everybody thinks the first thing you have to do after you get your first job is to get expensive mortgage and buy your own house. And parents basically waiting for their kids to leave the house so that they can enjoy freedom.
You suddenly need way more houses for the same number of people because people no longer want to live together. And that is what has largely been driving housing prices.
The times of prosperity caused this change but also for a long time were masking the effects.
Then multiply it by people's inflated expectations on how large their living space needs to be (houses are much larger than in the past even as they are less affordable),
It does not help that people are brainwashed that borrowing money is the way to go. It is not. It is a way to stay a slave to the bank. As a side note it is funny that there is so much debate about freedom and yet completely miss the fact that the biggest reason people are not free is that most people owe money to a bank and and most are not making good progress paying the debt.
So I think this wave of growth in the need for housing space will pass and at some point it will get more affordable.
I think future is very much to be written. In ideal world people would get educated on how to deal with debt, how to pay it and stay debt free. Also how to not get overboard buying stuff you don't really need (which I am very guilty of myself). I know this last one might cool the economy a little bit but I actually think it would be fine if it meant people had healthier financials.
What I think is likely, though, is formation of a new class which will essentially be free people in name only. Slaves to the bank from the day they are born to the day they die. Monitored and controlled at every step (which is already happening -- with banks and insurance companies digging through your private data to figure out how big risk you are). Poorly educated with both parents working, with attention grabbed by a shiny rectangle from the first years of their lives, with a noise of AI generated "media". Unable to reach real information through the noise. With no real friends, no real social interactions, no hope to upend the system because of no way to gather critical mass of people to do anything of note.
the situation is pretty much the opposite of this, we went from where folks could afford a house pretty quickly, sometimes even on a single salary, to double incomes not being enough, and the only hope of housing for some now being multigenerational and/or inherited
For instance: the supply of eggs is somewhat variable, so in times of shortage the price has to go up to make demand = supply. The rich aren't eating fewer eggs when this happens, the poor are. If everyone was rich, the price of eggs would go to infinity. (This seems to be happening to private school tuition.)
Why hasn't this happened in the past? A lot of property makes a lousy investment unless you plan to get value by living in it.
We now mostly work the same hours for money, then pay someone to do what mothers used to do for free; except possibly with some extra friction (tax, stress, commutes etc.).
Even nowadays, in the UK for example, many families are pushed to realize the soaring cost of childcare is greater than post tax earnings for one parent and skip employment to save money.
The wealthy are buying up all the tangible assets and price gouging everyone with high rent and subscriptions for everything imaginable, but it’s the workers asking for enough money to keep up that’s driving inflation. Ok.
The western world has gone from single income homeowners in the 80s to dual income homeowners today. That’s 80 hours of work per household per week instead of 40. IMO we’re trending towards multigenerational home ownership where it may require 4-6 income earners to own a house.
We’ll all be living paycheck-to-paycheck with 3 families to a house and the economists will still be blaming inflation on the working class having too much money. Maybe it’s time to start asking if a lack of competition is allowing the ownership class to manipulate supply so they can set unfair prices.