Rent increasing by the same percentage as income per capita is what I'd expect by default.

Inequality in rent-to-earnings is also a problem, though without knowing what it used to be I can't say if that has gotten worse or if it was always that unequal. Vimes Boots etc.

The Guardian article links to https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/interactive-publications/h... which shows the % of people in overcrowded homes has gone down, and the % in under-occupied homes has gone up, and that 25% of the EU population's housing has had its insulation improved in the last 5 years.

So, quality has gone up despite the same *average* fraction of income being spent. But I still don't know the distribution, the poorest may indeed be worse off, averages (even when combined with standard deviations) hide a lot, as anyone who has seen the Datasaurus dozen will know.

You're quoting nominal increases, the linked article is real income, aka after inflation.

Your link says inflation was 36% between 2010 and 2023, so the real increase in housing prices was 12% and rents declined 14% in real inflation adjusted terms.

++1

That's how the maths works though. If you are a farmer in Africa you buy one scythe for 10 dollars and your productivity increases by 100%

If you are a farmer in Denmark you buy the second tractor and your productity increases by 20%.

Also nothing was planned.

If rhis was planned then USA losing and China winning was planned too. Just globalization meaning everyone goes towards optimum

Almost all the countries that grew faster than the U.S. during this timeframe were former soviet-aligned countries that had artificially depressed economies due to communism. I’m not sure you can chalk up their growth to the EU.

Moreover, I’m not sure Germany, France, etc., voted to join the EU under the promise to sacrifice their own growth—they have significantly underperformed the U.S. over this time frame—to facilitate the development of eastern europe.

Are you talking about income or real income?

> Adjusted gross disposable income of households per capita in real terms is the total amount of money households have available for spending and saving after subtracting income taxes and pension contributions, plus the individual goods and services (such as education and health services) received free of charge from government and non-profit institutions serving households. Real means that its nominal value is adjusted for price increases (by the deflator of household actual final consumption expenditure). Per capita indicates that the value was divided by the total population.

Wouldn't this one, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N , "Real Median Household Income", be a batter match to EU household real income per capita?

If you take away tech then the US looks just as sick as Europe.

Yep, and that's in the aggregate. So some sectors got probably worse. Germany also has since forever now a domestic demand crisis. Austerity since the 90s and another boost in 2010 (Agenda 2010). Forced it on entire EU and hardcore on Greece, from which they never recovered.

UK seems basically flat: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/grossdomesticproductgdp/times...

I can't find corresponding US numbers?

If I read this correctly it is (total household income) / population.

This means that if countries get older, they get less working people so this number drops. This makes it difficult to draw conclusions.

That's to be expected for developed countries, the US had about the same increase over the same period: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

Once you remove cooked numbers and account for inflation the real growth of developed countries is very slow.

Keep in mind this is adjusted for inflation. However I agree it should have been more during this period.

Except Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU in 2007, so they have only been for 17 years in the union.

Hours worked for full time employees in EU apparently has been falling year over year since at least 2013. Maybe it has increased for part timers though?

Not sure how to square that with the fact that there’s been low productivity growth since 2008.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser and either search or use data code tps00071

Household income per capita is a bit confusing, can't blame anyone for interpreting this way. But from the glossary "Household real income per capita is the adjusted gross disposable income of households, in nominal terms, divided by the total population (source: national accounts) and by the deflator (price index) of household actual final consumption. "

So it's not divided per household.

But the point about working hours remains.

Many things are missing from this picture. It uses mean not median income, which would do a better job of telling how widespread the increase is. It uses a basic inflation adjustment which doesn’t differentiate between luxury goods and services vs basic necessities. In other words it’s hard to tell to what degree this rise has benefited people in general.

Yes, this is EU doing what's meant to do.