>That chart doesn't make the case you think it does. Real median household income rising [...]

Where are you getting household income from? It clearly says "Personal Income"

You're right, I was mixing up the related charts. Still, this makes my case even stronger since personal controls for adding more earners to a household. If real median personal income only rose from ~$28k in 1974 to ~45$k today, that's a 60% increase. Median personal income rising by 0.9% every year over 50 years compared to healthcare rising by 3-4% every year since 2000 is not a gap you can ignore. Necessities grew at nearly 3 to 4x the income rate.

So the case that quality of life is trending downward is still completely valid and shows why you can't just point at a single graph and say "see? line go up therefore quality of life fine"

	▲	gruez 25 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		>Still, this makes my case even stronger since personal controls for adding more earners to a household. If real median personal income only rose from ~$28k in 1974 to ~45$k today, that's a 60% increase. Labor force participation rate for both males and females has basically been flat for the past decade, so the recent discontent about "costs are all increasing while wages are stagnant or worse" is still unsupported. Moreover the 1970s was never an era of stay at home moms. Female labor force participation rate was already 45%, against around 78% for male. It also topped out at around 60% (so basically 15% increase, max) with the rate for males dropping. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300002 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300001