The financial foundation of middle-class life—a home, a college degree, a comfortable retirement—has grown radically more expensive over the past two decades, pricing out millions of families and forcing structural changes to how Americans work and raise children.
Homeownership, once a realistic goal for a single-income household, now requires extraordinary wealth. In the 1960s, the median home cost roughly twice the average annual salary. Today it costs nearly six times the average income. College tuition has followed the same pattern: what once cost a few hundred dollars—payable through summer work—now runs into the tens of thousands, saddling graduates with debt before their careers begin.
The pressure forces change. Historically, one income could support a family. Now most require two full-time earners just to cover basic expenses. Parents work more, see their children less, and delay or forgo major decisions like buying a home or starting a family.
These shifts did not happen by accident. Two major policy decisions are cited as catalysts. President Richard Nixon suspended the dollar's convertibility to gold in 1971, unleashing inflation that eroded purchasing power across decades. During the 2008 financial crisis, President George W. Bush acknowledged that "the market is not functioning properly"—a moment that exposed how government interventions had distorted price discovery.
Two structural reforms are needed to reverse the trend.
First: housing supply. Local zoning restrictions, lengthy permitting processes and bureaucratic barriers choke new construction and artificially inflate prices. Sweeping zoning reform and streamlined permitting could allow market forces to correct prices and bring affordability within reach for working families.
Second: challenge the cultural mandate that a traditional four-year college degree is the only path to a stable career. Higher education has become prohibitively expensive and, many argue, ideologically captured. The result: graduates delay adulthood—postponing marriage, homeownership and children—while carrying six-figure debt loads.
