It might be "a wash". Housing and education are more expensive, but food and entertainment costs are way lower. The cost of most things inside your home, like appliances and televisions is cheaper. Tools, hardware, and common home repairs are also cheaper.
It's very hard to get an exact 1:1 ratio, as many of us spend hundreds of dollars on cell phones that didn't exist back then, or thousands on computers, but naming two economic things that have gotten more expensive doesn't invalidate the myriad of things that have gotten commensurately cheaper.
For the bottom 50% of earners, real wages are more or less the same now as they were in 1970. They went up for a bit from the 90s to 08, but they are back at 1970 levels now.
Because wages have recently fallen, people in this group feel very poor right now.
For the top 50% of earners (increasing the closer to the top you get), real wages have increased a lot since the 1970s.
Between 1940 and 1985, most people were able to save about 5% of their income. Between 1985 and 2012, this decreased to become negative (i.e. most people live on debt).
Medical care, education, and energy have increased in cost several times over since 1970, and these costs are not captured in the real wages I quoted. It may be these costs explain why people have a lower disposable income, demonstrated by decreased savings rate.
> Housing and education are more expensive, but food and entertainment costs are way lower.
While that's true, it's certainly not "a wash." Housing and education are probably people's two biggest lifetime expenses. Even if housing prices doubled and food prices were cut by two thirds, the outcome would be higher overall expenses.
Personally, rent in a small apartment is more than all my other expenses combined.
It's very hard to get an exact 1:1 ratio, as many of us spend hundreds of dollars on cell phones that didn't exist back then, or thousands on computers, but naming two economic things that have gotten more expensive doesn't invalidate the myriad of things that have gotten commensurately cheaper.