The median income for a fully employed male, is according to those calculations, down slightly. While the median income for a fully employed female is up to a noticeably larger extent.
Today’s families have budgeted to the limits of their new two-paycheck status. As a result, they have lost the parachute they once had in times of financial setback—a back-up earner (usually Mom) who could go into the workforce if the primary earner got laid off or fell sick.
In many cases in the past the earnings of the back up earner would be considerably smaller. Saving just a fraction of the 2nd earners much higher income now (higher than a generation or more ago), would more than make up for the loss of what would have been earned by a "reserve worker", who not only was in a poorer market (average net income was lower), but who would face more discrimination (the 2nd "reserve worker" spouse was usually a woman, and in the past would have suffered from discrimination), and most importantly would not have been in the work force gaining skills, experience, connections, and seniority.
A quick summary of the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Expenditure Survey paints a very different picture of family spending. Consider what a family of four spends on clothing. Designer toddler outfits and $200 sneakers are favorite media targets, but when it is all added up, including the Tommy Hilfiger sweatshirts and Ray-Ban sunglasses, the average family of four today spends 33 percent less on clothing than a similar family did in the early 1970s. Overseas manufacturing and discount shopping mean that today’s family is spending almost $1,200 a year less than their parents spent to dress themselves.
What about food? Surely, families are eating out more and buying shopping carts full of designer water and exotic fruit? In fact, today’s family of four actually spends 23 percent less on food (at-home and restaurant eating combined) than its counterpart of a generation ago. The slimmed-down profit margins in discount supermarkets have combined with new efficiencies in farming to cut more costs for the American family.
Appliances tell the same picture. There is a lot of complaining about microwave ovens and espresso machines: Affluenza rails against appliances “that were deemed luxuries as recently as 1970, but are now found in well over half of U.S. homes, and thought of by a majority of Americans as necessities: dishwashers, clothes dryers, central heating and air conditioning, color and cable TV.” But manufacturing costs are down, and durability is up. Today’s families are spending 51 percent less on major appliances than their predecessors a generation ago....
All true, and all of that mitigates against potential problems from the points raised earlier in the article. |
