Standard of living in the United States

Per capita income is high but also less evenly distributed than in most other developed countries; as a result, the United States fares particularly well in measures of average material well being that do not place weight on equality aspects.

In 2005, 69% of Americans resided in their own homes, roughly the same percentage as in the United Kingdom, Belgium, Israel and Canada.

The growth of canals, steamboats, and railways, as well as the public school system, mass immigration, and urbanization, increased exposure to diseases.

Food prices rose in the 1830s, and industrialization brought along with it growing wealth inequality and business depressions that further worsened the situations of the poor.

As a result, average stature and life expectancy declined, and only rebounded from 1910 to 1950, as incomes rose, urban conditions became less crowded, and public health measures were put in place.

[35] Between 1949–50 and 1965–66, median family income (in constant 2009 dollars) rose from $25,814 to $43,614,[36] and from 1947 to 1960, consumer spending rose by a full 60%, and for the first time, as noted by Mary P. Ryan, "the majority of Americans would enjoy something called discretionary income, earnings that were secure and substantial enough to permit them to enter sectors of the marketplace that were once reserved for the affluent.

In terms of possession of telephones, TV sets, school enrollments, animal protein in diets, and energy consumption, the United States was far ahead of other industrialized countries.

[42] Wealthy and middle class and a majority of poor Americans had higher after-tax incomes than their counterparts almost anywhere else in the world.

[52] Some prominent economists have warned that the widening rich-poor gap in the U.S. population is a problem that could undermine and destabilize the country's economy and standard of living.

In 2006, Alan Greenspan wrote that "The income gap between the rich and the rest of the US population has become so wide, and is growing so fast, that it might eventually threaten the stability of democratic capitalism itself".

[53] In 2013, George Friedman, the head of Stratfor, wrote that the middle class' standard of living was declining, and that "If we move to a system where half of the country is either stagnant or losing ground while the other half is surging, the social fabric of the United States is at risk, and with it the massive global power the United States has accumulated.

[55] In 2020 Falcettoni and Nygaard wrote a paper[57] and released a policy brief[58] and a FEDS Note[59] on the standard of living across the United States of America.

In fact, Falcettoni and Nygaard find that per-capita income growth is only weakly correlated with how fast living standards are rising and deviations can be significantly large.