Real median household income rose more in the 20 years after NAFTA than the 20 years before it

[progree]

170. What about average household size declining, and more people living alone?

Last edited Sat May 30, 2015, 01:34 PM - Edit history (1)

People have mentioned that more wives / live-in partners are in the paid labor force now than back in the 1960's etc., and so that unfairly inflates household income statistics -- or in other words, real household median income has been kept from falling only because more wives have joined the paid labor force.

Although, as you point out in #69, from 1994, when NAFTA began, to 2014 the female labor force participation rate has only increased by about 1 percentage point, so no need to go over that again....

But, do you have backing for your [font color = blue]"136. The rate of two earner households in 94 is the same as today. Or within a couple of percent."[/font]. Given that the overall (male & female combined) labor force participation rate has fallen by 3.6 percentage points -- from 66.6% in 1/1994 to 63.0% in 1/2014 http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000 . It looks like we have less earners overall (as a percentage of the adult population) (not surprising with baby boom retirements). ).

Actually, employment to population ratio (ETPR) would be better for the purpose of determining how many earners there are:
1/1994: 62.2%, 1/2014: 58.8%. A decline of 3.8 percentage points
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300000

The male ETPR fell by 5.6 percentage points and the female ETPR fell by 1.2 percentage points from 1/1994 to 1/2014.

Anyway, I keep reading that average household size is declining, and more people are living alone.

Average household size: 1974: 2.97, 1994: 2.67, 2014: 2.54
http://www.statista.com/statistics/183648/average-size-of-households-in-the-us/

Percent of households with one person: 1974: 18%, 1994: 24.5%, 2011: 27.5%
(my rough eyeball readings, slide 6, from https://www.census.gov/newsroom/pdf/cah_slides.pdf

Anyway, don't the above 2 factors skew the median household income downward? Or to put it in other words, had average household size and the percent of one-person households stayed the same as in 1994, wouldn't the median household income be higher?

==========================================================
Labor force participation rate:
. . Overall: LNS11300000 Male: LNS11300001 Female: LNS11300002
Employment To Population Ratio:
. . Overall: LNS12300000 Male: LNS12300001 Female: LNS12300002