The slight decline in household size over the period of the nineteen seventies was MORE than offset by the rise of 'two wage earner' households over that same period, as WOMEN entered the working world in a big way.
It doesn't ofset anything. If there is more income per person because there are more people working, than there is still more wealth per person.
Also "over the 1970s" isn't the issue, household size has continued to decrease, two worker households continued to increase for a time, but that stopped.
You really can't have it both ways, Tim. You said that your data was 'inflation adjusted'. Either it is or it isn't.
High inflation distorts economic data, even inflation adjusted data. The distortion is not lack of inflation adjustment, the data becomes less comparable over time even with any inflation adjustment, and even less reliable for a specific time without trying to do any long term comparisons.
Re: "I'm saying the 80s (and certainly yhe 80s post early 80s recession) was better than the 70s, even though some data shows otherwise."
In some respects it obviously was.... Just NOT in the statistics that I specifically mentioned: wage growth, job creation, or GNP growth rates.
Wages became a lower part of total compensation. Wage growth, esp. household wage growth (because households shrunk) gives a distorted picture. Job creation for the 80s was reduced by the big double dip recession at the beginning that cleared out the inflation from the 70s. If you take the decade after that double dip you find higher job growth. Measured GNP growth rates are distorted by the economic distortions that inflation creates, and also by the fact that every dollar government spends is counted as a dollar of GDP, whether or not it does anything useful. That's a particularly relevant point now, when we are considering recent stimulus efforts, but its also relevant to the comparison of a time periods when government as a percentage of GDP grew (the 70s) and when it shrank.
(Many analysts and market commentators, given to analyzing longer-term trends, now include the post-Tech stock crash recessionary period
Perhaps, but the 80s, or even the 90s was not the "post-Tech stock crash recessionary period". The 80s and 90s where a bull market period not a bear market period. The bear came later. |
