Hacker News Reader

>However, during that time, there has been a large shift of two-parent (where both parents worked) to single-parent households.

I wouldn't categorize this shift[1] as "large" and given the relative sizes of the groups of households I don't believe it can be having the affect you suggest.

[1]http://i.imgur.com/j3CF9lk.png (from http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-14.pdf)

View on HN

Sorry, I should have been clearer on the time period. I can't remember the exact dates, but the time period of the data I saw was from the late 1970s to the year 2000.

I agree there wasn't much of a shift from 1990s onward, but there was from the late 1970s.

You also have to remember that household income doesn't take much of a shift in household structure in order to flatten out income.

If you had 10% of households go from two income earners (say $80K) to single income earners ($40K) each, that would pull down the average substantially.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com