I think you'll find the average home price/income ratio took a huge jump in the 1970s and another one in the past decade. As far as education goes, past generations learned through high school what now requires a college education, and didn't have to endure 15 years of socialist indoctrination to do it.
Having kids ain't the same deal now that corporal punishment is borderline-criminal and family law is seemingly designed to shatter families.
And that's not even touching on the quality of life for the millions in the post-boomer generations who never survived to see the outside of a womb. The wholesale devaluation of human life is one of the biggest wounds to quality of life that the boomer generation has perpetrated.
Indeed. That 800 lb gorilla has to be at the top of the mix when evaluating the decline of civilization.
It would be a big project to do quality research on this, but here’s what I can find in 15 minutes:
The average household income was about $3k in 1940
The average household income is about 60k today. and the median home price is about 200k. (I had the link but lost it.)
So assuming everything’s equal, which it’s not but there are inequalities favoring both sides, the median home in 1940 would need to cost about $10k to compare to the cost today.
I also stubbed across this good indicator that there is no problem in home ownership as a quality of life: Home ownership rates have increased from 64% of the nation to 68% in the last 9 years. In 1940, the rate was less than 43.6%. We were a nation of renters at the beginning of this century. Freddie Mac tells us that will grow to 68.5% by 2010.