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Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

Hrmm, not consistent with Census Bureau current population survey which shows household size hitting a record low in 2019.

https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/demo/tables/familie...

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What conclusion should I draw from these seemingly inconsistent statistics?

I don't know! The article that supposedly upholds the theory of slow household growth is discussing a forecast of the 2020 decennial census and says nothing about 2019. The income data we are discussing is for 2019 only. These two things do not really stand in opposition to each other.

These statistics depend on how the questions was framed to get the data.

I would say it is wiser to draw a conclusion using the census household size data, since the headline statistic of household income is also sourced from the census. Why compare apples and oranges when you have apples and apples?

Well the inferences would only be as good as the sampling then. I know for me, the census was the last thing that was on my mind, and it was only completed it because my spouse was did it. There has been many issues with Census data collection (take a google news search).

This data is from the Current Population Survey where they select households and then either visit or call on the phone. It's not a thing where they just mail out the survey. The CPS also repeatedly selects the same household in consecutive surveys, which gives them continuity that other surveys lack.

Given the context the the article provides, and that the raw table does not, I am inclined to believe the pew research article, and would suggest the linked table needs to also have some methodology and definition of what it thinks it is and is not capturing.

The pew article also looks at statistics like "In 2019, 20% of households are shared households, up from 17% in 2007."

The weakness in the pew article is it's forecasting growth in household size from one year of its model, obviously we need to wait more time to see if it's model is correct.

I have the opposite assumption: the raw data is usually more reliable than an editorial. And I confirmed it: the raw table is more reliable since it is the same survey across different years. The article is inconsistently comparing numbers from 2 different surveys. The 2018 figure (2.63) is from the "American Community Survey" and the 2010 figure (2.58) is from "Census SF1 data".

But the 2010 "American Community Survey" says the average houshold size is 2.63 (https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?q=b25010&tid=ACSDT1Y201...), so for this survey the trend is flat.

The pew article is more comprehensive than those two surveys. They also point out supporting data from

https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2019/demo/p60-26...

From which they conclude "In 2019, 20% of households are shared households, up from 17% in 2007."

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/04/05/a-record-64...

from which they mention "By 2016, 20% of Americans lived in a multigenerational household, up from 12% in 1980"

One survey is one survey, multiple data points from a set of different perspectives is more comprehensive an analysis and less susceptible to single measurement methodology errors.

The main thing I take from this is that movement of a household income number is fairy meaningless unless you also know what household size number is measured or calculated with the income number.

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