buybuydandavis comments on [Retracted] Simpson's paradox strikes again: there is no great stagnation? - Less Wrong

30 Post author: CarlShulman 30 July 2012 05:55PM

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Comment author: buybuydandavis 30 July 2012 06:20:45PM 8 points [-]

Thomas Sowell makes a similar point about stagnation of "household" income. The demographics of households have changed dramatically, with a large increase in households with single adults, and single non dependent adults. Two incomes make less money than one, so household incomes can look worse.

I don't think this accurately captures any real issues with young dependent adults, but that's just another instance of the problem of summary statistics of heterogeneous aggregates.

Comment author: Manfred 30 July 2012 09:09:12PM 3 points [-]

Ah, yeah, I looked up the median household income and was slightly surprised it hadn't dramatically increased as you'd naively expect if the OP's explanation is right. Thanks for explaining :)