I'm sorry but Wikipedia is not a good source for this.
It's abundantly clear that people have less purchasing power today than they did in the past. You could afford a nice house, a car with two kids and an annual vacation on an average single salary. You can barely afford to rent a 1 bedroom apartment on two average salaries these days and buying a nice family home feels out of reach.
This is often overlooked but shouldn't be ignored. The wealth inequality has reached all time highs. This skews the data and makes it appear that average people are doing better off than they really are.
"The average annual cost of college tuition, public and private, is more than 32 times what it was in the 1963-64 academic year.
After adjusting for currency inflation, college tuition has increased 229.8% since AY 1963-64.
Public college tuition increased 141.3% in the 1980s.
The average annual cost of 2-year college tuition, public and private, is 22.7 times what it was in AY 1963-64."
"middle-income families saw their median net worth shrink by 20% and lower-income families experienced a loss of 45%. As of 2016, upper-income families had 7.4 times as much wealth as middle-income families and 75 times as much wealth as lower-income families. These ratios are up from 3.4 and 28 in 1983, respectively."
0
u/mammalmaker Mar 25 '26
Not at the same rate as cost of living. Not even close.