ABSTRACT
The more comprehensive model of housing cost to young families suggests that underlying cost rises of 300 and more per cent over 20 years. That underlying rise has been countered and masked by enormous and rapid adaptations on the part of younger adults. From the 1930s to the 1960s, the concern was for the young, and the incomes and freedoms of the middle aged and elderly were held down, very deliberately, in favour of investing in youth. Real incomes reached a nadir in the 1930s – much more so for younger men and women than for older ones – then rose steeply through the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. Male earnings accounted for 88 per cent of the total personal income enjoyed by all New Zealanders aged 25-34 years in 1951, and still 62 per cent by 1991. The total net income or after-tax-after-social-security cash income of each Standard Family is calculated, and the trends in real purchasing powers traced.
