Terry Fitzgerald at the Minneapolis Fed has a nice study out that refutes the popular notion that the rich have benefited at the expense of the poor and middle class. "The incomes of most types of middle American households have increased substantially over the past three decades. But the outsized gains of the rich do not mean that middle America stagnated."HT: Greg Mankiw
It seems that more households have dual incomes today than in the 1970s. In otherwords, are median household incomes rising because households are working more total hours?
ReplyDeleteMark,
ReplyDeleteAccording to pg55 the working hours of wives did increase between 1976 and 2006 from 732 to 1,360 hours. However the hourly increase accounted for just 1/3 of the overall income gain. Average hourly income of wives increased from $9.l48 to $15.10. This accounted for 1/4 of the overall income gain ... so wives accounted for 3/5 meaning that 2/5 came from husbands.