> That assumes that women working weren’t producing anything, and the construction industry didn’t get more workers as women joined the workforce.

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.

Yes, but that income should equal production, so either more housing is produced, or something else more is produced, and either gets cheaper or we have more stuff. I guess it’s a combination of all three, our society is definitely wealthier with more people working, we are better off than we were in the 1950s. So…somehow our increased housing costs either mean we are getting more housing somehow, or we get other things which make up for the more money we have to put toward housing.

I think that sounds about right. We are wealthier than in the 1950s. We have super computers in our pockets and a global information network, for example!

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.