What are the benefits and drawbacks of a double income household? 10

Im 47 and when i was 16 my mother decided to work full time and her entire income went to paying off our house as my dad also worked full time and they managed to pay off their house in less than 4 years. Most of my friends mums at that time didnt work at all or just had small part time jobs and everyone still lived in nice large houses with backyards and usually 2 cars.

I think what he’s trying to say is this: inflation is a result, in part, of demand. I.e.: the price of things is mediated by what people are able to pay. If things are priced too highly relative to the amount of money people have they won’t sell; if people get more money, the price of things will go up, because sellers are now able to sell for more without affecting demand.

In a world where households only had one earner, this kept the price of property at a certain level. When women entered the workforce suddenly household incomes doubled, thus households had more money to spend on property - thus inflation in house prices. Effectively, people ended up doing twice as much work to end up living in the same conditions as they started in.

Ive been saying this since 1991 when i was the only pupil advocating for stay at home mum's in sixth form debate. Look at me now people..

Wife and I have 5 incomes.

2 jobs, 2 pensions, a part time job. Last year I said, "if you could just work 4 hours of OT each week it would help."

How ridiculous is that?

I have been saying the same thing, woman working ultimately pushed up asset prices and now it’s pretty much essential for them to work to afford a house.

I’m with him about the impact of two income houses.

Not so close to his views around sailing nuclear power plants. If they are large enough to power something of substance, they would be too heavy to sail.

This is awesome. I was arguing this point with friends, but I didn't have the eloquent British accent and told I was sexist lol. But yes, it is just economics. And the point cannot be understated about loss of discretionary time. People can't afford a house, because technically the median is having 2 adults working. The easiest way to fix this is to lower the percentage of income allowed for how big your mortgage can be by 25-50% of current. This effectively removes this problem, but you would crush property values.

This is a revelation. I never thought of house inflation in this way but it does make complete sense. This guy talks lots of sense

I've been saying this for decades. Women's Lib, as it was called, essentially encourage/pushed almost all women into full-time work from post-education. Supply of money for housing went up so prices went up accordingly. Now we're all suffering, especially single people. The cruel irony is, most married women end up wanting to stop work some time after the second child anyway but now many families can't afford for that to happen. Sometimes chasing ideals doesn't actually make us happier.