think what you think you are supposed to think...
when The Facts don't support that.
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The following analysis is from John Lounsbury, and provides U.S. with a very interesting view of: when we were much better off, and now, when we are not.
Howsomever, what John admits is that he cannot see The Why of It.
Eliminate the Baby Boomers, eliminate RonnieR and Little Willie Clinton, eliminate woemen (theoretically, of course) and what are "we left" with...?
Tis too Far Right to blame it all on W...!!!
And that's true even if/since he really deserves it.
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However, there are some parsings that need to be considered:
FIRST, when woemen left home to work did not occur at the same time as the rise in single parent homes. So, adding a 2nd income would substantially increase "household" incomes, and divorces would substantially decrease them. But, when? And, by how much?
SECOND, the decline in high(er) paying "labor union" jobs may have been offset by the dot.com bubble; but NAFTA exported them. We need to factor in precisely when that happened.
THIRD, just after 9-11 the "war economy" - using Gulf Oil states loans to U.S. - did not appear to create many high income jobs; but the 02-06 housing bubble - using Chinese loans to U.S. - obviously did. When that bubble burst the economy tanked.
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Said/asked Humpty:
"This is really Dumpty. Can no body put U.S. back together again?"
(or something like that)
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John's Conclusion
We still have a mystery not explained about why the “golden years” for real household income occurred when and how they did.
Until more data is examined we will have to listen to Republicans talk about the genius of Reagan and the Democrats about the acumen of Clinton.
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There are really three periods of unique behavior for real median household income:
1967-1982
1983-1999 and
2000 -2011.
This quite evident in the following graph:
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Number of Married Women Working
In the following graph we see that the number of married women working was growing much faster than married men.
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The fact that a disproportionate increase in the number of women working was not a factor is seen in the following graph, where the ratio of married men to married women working has been plotted.
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Another factor that should be looked at is the increase in the number of unmarried couples forming households in the past twenty years or so.
That would also increase household income for what were formerly two households have become one and do not show up in the data for married men and women.
Employment Population Ratio
something that we would expect to be affected by the baby boom bubble
but, the baby boomers are all in the over-twenty population by 1984.
And the baby boom cannot explain why real household income has dropped so much in the years since 2000. The first baby boomers only reached age 65 this year.
It is clear that the baby boomers probably helped boost the population participation rate, but...
most of the baby boomers were in the work force by the mid 1980s.
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Real Household Income
http://econintersect.com/wordpress/?p=14397
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