It turns out, first of all, that most American families were actually doing a lot better in the 1980s and 1990s than we thought they were. The aggregate median household income — that is, the number we’re used to citing, which lumps everyone together — was about $46,000 in 1982 and had risen to almost $55,000 20 years later. That’s just a little less than 20 percent higher, or an average of less than 1 percent growth per year.
But Shapiro shows that if you were the head of a household and were between the ages of 25 and 29 in 1982, your income grew over the next two decades, on average, by more than 70 percent, from $45,440 to $77,543.
That may be one reason why both Reagan and Clinton were popular presidents, despite their ideological differences. According to Shapiro, it turns out they presided over much stronger income growth across just about all age groups than we previously understood.
After 2002, however, household incomes did more than flatten; they essentially cratered for middle-aged and older Americans. That same group whose income had risen by something like 70 percent under Reagan and Clinton experienced a drop of about 19 percent over the next decade. If you were in your early 50s at the start of the Bush years, generally speaking, your income fell by an average of about 30 percent.