What’s the difference between new homes and homes from the 1970s?

Today’s homes have more square footage, baths, and  garages:

The graph above, created by Mark Perry, shows that in 1973, a little more than half (52 %) of new homes built had either one garage (17%), a carport (13%) or no garage (22%), and only 48% of new homes included garages for 2 or more cars. In each of the previous ten years, 80% or more of new homes build have include garages for at least two cars (data here).

In 1973, 60% of new homes include two or more bathrooms. By 2005, 96% of new homes had two or more bathrooms (data here).

What is the bottom line? Perry explains:

A generation ago it was fairly common for new homes to be built with a single garage, single bathroom and no air conditioning, and today those types of new homes have become extinct.  What are most common today are new homes with two or more bathrooms, two-car garages or bigger, central airconditioning, and 50% more square footage than new homes in the early 1970s (data here).

Did the National Minimum Wage Affect UK Prices?

Jonathan Wadsworth (London School of Economics and Political Science) has a relatively new discussion paper looking into how the national minimum wage affected UK prices:

One potential channel through which the effects of the minimum wage could be directed is that firms who employ minimum wage workers could have passed on any higher labour costs resulting from the minimum wage in the form of higher prices. This study looks at the effects of the minimum wage on the prices of UK goods and services by comparing prices of goods produced by industries in which UK minimum wage workers make up a substantial share of total costs with prices of goods and services that make less use of minimum wage labour.Using sectoral-level price data matched to LFS survey data on the share of minimum wage workers in each sector, it is hard to find much evidence of significant price changes in the months that correspond immediately to the uprating of the NMW. However over the longer term, prices in several minimum wage sectors – notably take-away foods, canteen meals, hotel services and domestic services – do appear to have risen significantly faster than prices of non-minimum wage sectors. These effects were particularly significant in the four years immediately after the introduction of the minimum wage.