I find it interesting that despite everything to do with health care, we're only spending approximately 4% more on medical care than we were in 1949.
That we are generally buying larger houses is no surprise, but that we're spending a substantially larger portion of our incomes to do so is, while not surprising, certainly interesting in the sense that this binds us to our income streams more than generations past.
I don't know the data, so perhaps someone could enlighten me as to whether or not this is because houses are just more expensive than they used to be, or because we just like buying larger houses (possibly for status) than we used to, or whether we just have more income available to spend on houses since we're spending so much less on food and clothing?