[am452]

One reason why are standard of living is higher today is the dual incomes. Most married women in the thirties did not work outside the home.

How many families today would live like they do if you took the wife's income out of the picture?

[1rudeboy]

Are you proposing to make dual incomes illegal? Please elaborate.

[Alberta's Child]

That’s a valid point, but even if every married woman with kids gave up their job outside the home our standard of living would still be several orders of magnitude higher than it was back in the 1930s.

[Mase]

One reason why are standard of living is higher today is the dual incomes.

Then how would you explain the real increases in per-capita income and per-capita consumption in this country?

[Thorin]

>>>>>>>One reason why are standard of living is higher today is the dual incomes. Most married women in the thirties did not work outside the home. How many families today would live like they do if you took the wife's income out of the picture?

BINGO! The fact that most families now have two wage earners has helped mask our relative economic decline, as shown by the fact that we've gone from having a third of the population taking home roughly 45% of the GNP in wages in the postwar period to the situation of today, where those two numbers are reversed. In real dollars, wages have been largely stagnant for decades. Of course, this purely economic analysis doesn't take into account all the family and societal problems caused by the need to have two wage earners instead of one in a family.