In raw dollars, I surpassed my dad’s income when I was 24 (he was 44 at the time). In raw dollars, my son has surpassed my income but it took him longer to accomplish it (he was 26 when he pulled ahead of me).
I asked my Dad about this a while back, and he thinks he passed his dad’s income in his mid-twenties as well. So 3 generations in a row have done this. Since my youngster is in the 98th income centile*, it will be difficult for his offspring to continue the pattern.
I out-earned my Dad up to about his/my age 28. After that age he out-earned me until he got to where I am now. I expect the years ahead until my retirement will be the same as now: he did *much *better than I ever will.
I’m doing the exact same job he did for the exact same company (net of mergers, etc.) that he did. For almost the same total number of years. On an inflation corrected basis and accounting for bennies and such my total career earnings will be about 30% of his. That’s right: 1/3rd of dear old Dad’s; 2/3rds less than he. I’m sort of a poster child for middle class wage stagnation in the US, although my issue is more the tale of bad individual luck and declining unionism.
My Mom worked only intermittently over the years but had a real high paying job most of the time when she did. Some years she certainly beat me, but I think my lifetime total beats hers handily.
OTOH, my professional-class wife has massively out-earned her low-paid Mom. Her Dad died when she was young; he had a better job but the two together still wouldn’t beat my wife.
ETA: ref post(s) just above.
Add me to the chorus of people wondering why the heck the OP asked for non-inflation corrected numbers. That’s simply meaningless. I hope he will return to the thread and explain why he did that.
Does anyone have a ref to the NPR episode he mentioned? Perhaps that would be informative. Or perhaps they’re idiots using non-inflation corrected numbers for sensationalism, and the OP went the same way to match.
I factored in inflation, because I missed the instruction in the OP. Of course I earn more raw dollars than my dad did FFS, but what about the buying power? Ignoring inflation renders this question useless.
Inflation adjusted yes - but at the same time there are lots of expenses my parents didn’t worry about. Like smartphones for everyone, and high speed internet connectivity. My parents didn’t worry about saving for college - it was more affordable. They didn’t worry about retirement - they saved something, but they believed that social security and medicare would be there for them. My dad drove company cars - so they didn’t need to worry about that expense. Our health insurance wasn’t a high deductible plan - you just went to the doctor - and the health insurance came with the job.
My mother worked part time - that’s what I currently do - I outearn her part time (I run our consulting company).
I had a comfortable childhood. My kids have had a comfortable childhood - perhaps more than comfortable - we’ve used the difference to travel - an opportunity my parents couldn’t give me.
My Dad was a CEO by the time he was 30. I’m a good deal older than that, but my job is the equivalent of middle-management. in non-adjusted dollars we earn about the same at this age.
Obviously, CEO pay has changed dramatically since then, and he’d be worth 3-4x as much on today’s job market.
In real terms his inflation adjusted salary was worth far more than mine. The change is not just about inflation adjustment though. Houses in this market pretty much require either dual incomes or a c-level salary.
When he was purchasing, the average middle manager could easily afford a house with a yard in this area, while his wife stayed home with the kids. Through my daughter’s infancy and early childhood I spent more each month on daycare than I did on rent.
My mother made less. She was an education mom, so made sure I got a degree, so now I have a higher-paying job.
(I don’t have access to her old salary, so I just looked at websites giving average current salaries for the job she held then. I’m assuming pay rates followed inflation exactly, which is obviously not true.)
the poll needs a multiple answer option, I have no idea what $ amount my Dad made, at any time in his life.
in terms of spending power, it seems like I earn much less than my Dad (grew up when single income homes were possible), in terms of raw number of $ I earn maybe slightly less than my Dad, but within range of comparison, I think. My wife and I together earn the same or possibly a little more (again, I think)
I’m 59, and at my peak earning rate ever. Dad earned less at age 59 than I do. But that’s because my dad retired at 55. At his peak earning rate, he earned a lot more than I do now.
But my earnings have been higher over my career than his, I think. He worked for relatively low wages for a long time, while mine started out pretty high. I expect I’ll have earned more than he did over our careers.
General inflation adjustment does have the problem that it’s a single calculation attempting to discern ‘real’ and ‘inflation’ price changes in a shifting basket of goods and services people buy on average. And it can’t possibly apply to everybody if it’s accurate on average and there’s any variation among individuals.
However among the two categories you gave the second is much easier to accept than the first. College costs are factored into the CPI, but not necessarily in the same proportion as the cost incurred by a given individual. Some people don’t have children. Some people don’t feel an obligation to fund children’s college (or even feel a positive moral benefit in not doing so). Some people have several children, feel obligated to pay fully for their college, and since they have the money wouldn’t get any financial aid.
OTOH I can’t take seriously just counting a cell phone or high speed internet as an ‘extra cost’ without any consideration of the extra benefit. ‘People expect’ can’t IMO be a serious reason to say living standards have grown more slowly in a serious attempt to measure it economically. OTOH in the political realm that’s a very real factor. A lot of the ‘we’re a poor country now’ stuff in the US is due to rising expectations as opposed to actual decline in living standards, though latter have grown more slowly on average, and shrunk for some.
And that is sort of my point. We’ve moved on from three TV stations and getting up to change the channel, and your research being done at the library on a set of ten year old encyclopedias. What my parents thought was a reasonable standard of living to give their kids, my own kids would be shocked by - what my grandparents gave their kids as a middle class existence, is not what I grew up with - what my great grandparents were able to provide was nearly third world (I did have one set of slaughterhouse working immigrant great grandparents straight out of The Jungle - “sorry your kid fell into the machine and died - here have some sausage.”)
Our pace of change is such that it cannot be measured by income alone.
Maybe it’s a generational thing, but I’m surprised how many people know what their parents earned. This was something that was just not discussed in my house. Don’t ask and don’t tell. (I know because I did ask, and they didn’t tell. I only asked once…)
On the other hand, there are some pretty big declines in basics like home ownership rates, or median income vs median home prices.
My parents’ household income was about ~60% of the national median home value when they were my age, my household income (again, with two incomes) is ~30% of the current median home value.
To an extent, homes are more than they used to be. Bigger, more efficient utilities, insulation, better electrical and plumbing systems, central AC is more common, etc. I’d have no problems buying the tar paper shack was the first home of my great grandparents on the cracker side of the family. Or the post-war bungalow that was my grandparents’ first home.
But the difference in home quality isn’t so tremendous if we only go back 25-30 years.
(Actually, I just looked up home values in the city where my parents bough their first home. Holy shit I think I could pay cash, today, for a comparable home. But I think that’s more about the decline of heavy industry in the midwest than our relative standards of living…)
Today I make much more in one month than my mother made in a full year at her federal government job back in 1989. When she passed in '89, her house payment was $120 a month, yearly property taxes were about $200 a year. I pay more than that monthly for my house payment and taxes.