When The American Dream Started Requiring Two Incomes cover art

When The American Dream Started Requiring Two Incomes

When The American Dream Started Requiring Two Incomes

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 The episode offers a detailed economic history tracing the decline of the single-income American Dream and the rise of the two-income household as a necessity, not a choice. It explains that the single-earner middle-class lifestyle, statistically normal between 1945 and 1973 due to the "Great Compression" where wages kept pace with productivity, became unsustainable after the "Great Decoupling" starting around 1973. This shift occurred because the costs of essential middle-class markers—namely housing, healthcare, and education—began to rise dramatically faster than median wages, forcing a second adult into the workforce just to maintain the family's standard of living. The analysis concludes that while the two-income model is now the norm, the second income is often heavily offset by taxes and work-related expenses, offering surprisingly little net discretionary gain while sacrificing the intangible benefits of having a full-time caretaker at home.

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