I recently turned 70. One of the cards I received harked back to the year of my birth.
In 1955, On the Waterfront won the best film Oscar, the Syracuse Nationals won the NBA title and the Brooklyn Dodgers the World Series. I Love Lucy, Dragnet and the Jack Benny Show were on television — in black and white.
The card also provided some economic data. Here’s where things stood then as compared to today, 55 years later:
| 1955 | 2025 | Increase | |
| Average Annual Household Income | $4,150 | $121,000 | 29 times |
| Minimum Wage | $1.0 | $7.25 | 7.25 times |
| Average New House | $10,950 | $534,000 | 49 times |
| Gallon of Milk | $.92 | $4.45 | 4.7 times |
| Loaf of Bread | $.18 | $1.84 | 10.2 times |
| Postage Stamp | $.03 | $.78 | 26 times |
As you can see, there’s a huge range in how prices have changed over time with the cost of housing far exceeding everything else. The cost of postage comes next, while the minimum wage trails everything except for the price of a gallon of milk.
To some extent, however, we’re comparing apples and oranges. One reason housing has gotten so much more expensive is that houses are so much bigger than they were 70 years ago, along with addition of many more amenities. I grew up in a house with one bathroom for four people. New houses today seem to have a separate bathroom for every bedroom. And the kids no longer share a bedroom.
Also, there can be a lot of variation in prices, whether housing in different markets or the minimum wage, which many states and municipalities have increased to $15 an hour, or even higher in a few states. The price above for a loaf of bread in 2025 is for white bread, which probably corresponds with what was available in the supermarket in 1955. But many people prefer whole wheat or other options which are more expensive.
Income
The average household income has grown significantly since 1955, at higher than the rate of just about anything listed other than housing. But that doesn’t mean that average wages and salaries have increased by as much. A large part of the higher income can be attributed to two-income families. Many more women are out in the workforce than was the case seven decades ago. Just 40% of women aged 25 to 54 worked outside of the home in 1955 as compared to more than three quarters today.
In addition, at least with income, averages might not be the right comparison. With increased inequality, the extremely high incomes of today’s one percenters can skew the averages even if middle- and lower-income workers have seen a much lower increase in their earning power. It would be better to compare median incomes– the midpoint of all incomes of American households — which would not be affected by the vastly higher incomes of a few Americans.
The numbers I was able to find appear to bear this out, though they’re a little different from what was in on the card (and the makers of the card may have been confusing mean and median).
| Median | Mean | Difference | |
| 1955 | $4,400 | $4,820 | 9.5% |
| 2025 | $83,700 | $121,000 | 44.6% |
As these numbers show, the difference between median and average household incomes have grown dramatically over the last 70 years. A deeper analysis, which I’ll leave to economists, would factor in the effects of taxes and public benefits, though they may not change things too significantly. Public benefits are more generous than they were back in 1955, which certainly helps the poorest among us. But taxes are also much lower, especially the taxes on higher-income households. The top marginal rate in 1955 was a whopping 91% as compared to 37% today.
This, of course, leaves out those in the middle who have benefit neither from increased public benefits or decreased tax rates. This is highlighted in a recent Boston Globe series about the squeezed middle class.
What This Means
A comparison of all the changes since 1955 would take a book (or two). Some are obvious: The rise of computers and the internet. Increased immigration. The hollowing out manufacturing and the communities that depended on it. Less racial and gender discrimination — even if we still have a long way to go.
On politics, we may have come full circle. The mid-50s saw the rise of McCarthyism, described in lurid detail in Rachel Maddow’s podcast Ultra. Today we have the Trump reprisals against anyone he sees as disloyal to him.
I recently heard a talk by New York Times columnist David Brooks who was hopeful that as a country we will emerge stronger from our current political situation. He cites the political scientist Samuel P. Huntington who in his 1981 book, American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony, described a pattern of the United States experiencing episodes of rupture and repair every 60 years or so.
Brooks feels that this is playing out now, that we last went through a national reckoning during the 1960s clash over the Vietnam War culminating in Watergate and the legal protections against corruption that followed. I hope he’s right. But our institutions, or at least the people running them, may have been stronger back then. When President Nixon ordered the Department of Justice to quash subpoenas of the Oval Office tapes, the result was the “Saturday Night Massacre” when both Attorney General Elliott Richardson and his deputy, William Ruckelshaus, resigned rather than carry out the demand. Today, Attorney General Pamela Bondi is all too willing to carry out President Trump’s every whim.
I seem to have strayed pretty far from comparing the costs of living in 1955 to those today. Suffice it to say that while many people have much more than the average person 70 years ago, many others are struggling to make ends meet, especially those without a college education. Housing costs have changed more dramatically than any others, no doubt explaining much of today’s homelessness crisis.
The decline of unions and shipping of blue-collar jobs overseas undermined the bargaining power of those without college degrees. These two broad changes in large part explains the power of the MAGA movement. They also may provide guidance for a path forward that benefits all Americans.