NO ONE HAS IT HARDER THAN THEIR FATHER DID:

[Dartmouth economist Bruce] Sacerdote in "Fifty Years Of Growth In American Consumption, Income, And Wages": "These estimates suggest that consumption is up 1.7 percent per year or 164 percent over the whole time period. These estimates of growth strike me as consistent with the significant increases in quality and quantity of goods enjoyed by Americans over the last half century."

Sacerdote doesn't believe those headlines, either, skeptically mentioning them in his paper.

But what about that above chart, the one showing stagnating wages? It looks a lot different depending on the inflation measure you choose. And there seems to be a broad consensus that the traditional consumer price index measure overstates inflation, meaning real wage and income growth are higher than we think. Sacerdote instead focuses on the price consumption expenditure index, which covers a broader range of spending and adjusts for changing consumer behavior. Sacerdote (bold is mine):

PCE adjusted wages appear to have grown at .5% per year during 1975-2015 while the de-biased CPI adjusted wages grew at 1% per year over the same time period. ... This adjustment reverses the finding of wage stagnation. Using the PCE to deflate nominal wages suggests real wage growth of 24 percent from 1975-2015 or about .54% growth in real wages per year. Importantly that growth is significantly less than the 1.18% annual growth in real wages (using PCE inflation) seen in the earlier decade 1964-1975 and is significantly less than GDP per capita growth of 1.8 percent over the 1975-2015 period. But 24 percent growth over the 1975-2015 is substantially better than zero growth and the PCE inflation could itself still contain upward bias. Adjusting for the Hamilton (1998) and Costa (2001) estimates of CPI bias implies real wage growth of 1 percent per year during 1975-2015 and GDP per capita growth of 2.7 percent per year.

And as he sums it up: "Estimates of slow and steady growth seem more plausible than media headlines which suggest that median American households face declining living standards."

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