The Wages of Men

It's not that they don't know it. Years ago, Paul Harvey wrote a column about how family incomes had risen. He always was careful to say family incomes. It was obvious he knew that individual incomes for men had fallen, and the only reason averaage family incomes had risen was that more families had both a hasband and wife working.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/the-wages-of-men/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

March 16, 2014
Paul Krugman

For reference: Here are changes in hourly real wages of men, 1973-2012, at different percentiles of the wage distribution, calculated from Census data by the Economic Policy Institute. As you can see, wages have fallen for 60 percent of men.

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I was curious to see how the House Budget Committee report on poverty deals with this fact, which surely plays some role in the persistence of poverty despite government efforts. The answer is, it never so much as mentions falling real wages.