vitrineeveryday life across time

A statistical atlas of ordinary life

A century of ordinary life.
On the record.

Explore homes, budgets, food, and working lives through the records people left. Move between decades and collections; open any exhibit to see who was measured and where the evidence came from.

Choose a room Follow a guided tour →
The composite family. Each room is a statistical composite, assembled from separate distributions with separate sources. The family at the median income did not also have the median house, the median car, and the median diet. No single family described here ever existed; each fact tells you, in its provenance drawer, which real population it was measured from.

Start with a place and a decade

Choose your room

Enter a room to explore its objects and records, or follow a collection across years. Each country keeps its own sources and measured populations.

United States

13 decades · 555 observations · 22 documented gaps

Step into the American homeStart with the 1950s: explore the house, then open an object to meet its evidence →

Japan

7 decades · 66 observations · 22 documented gaps

Japan, through its surveysBegin with household budgets, working lives, and equipment across the years →

United Kingdom

7 decades · 51 observations · 22 documented gaps

A developing collection of period records. Choose a decade to see the evidence available and the questions still open.

Follow a question

01 · Change over time

What became ordinary?

Follow technology, work, food, and family life through the US century, with the gaps still showing.

Explore the trends → 02 · The household budget

What did work buy?

Read US prices in hours of work and shares of income, with each comparison's limits on display.

Explore affordability → 03 · A guided walk

How did home life change?

A three-stop walk through paid work, unpaid work, childhood, and the changing US home.

Take the transect →

Docent tours

Short curated walks through the evidence — every figure bound to its exhibit.

One paycheck

Put an average production wage beside median family income. The comparison is revealing, but it does not tell us how many earners a family needed.
The work that moved

A reconstruction of unpaid work shows changing hours for women and men. Whose time is counted matters as much as the direction of the lines.

Inside the US collection

A research inventory of the US wing. Counts describe the collection's coverage, not how common something was or how certain the evidence is.

Sourced observations
555
Calculations from sourced inputs
15
Documented gaps
22

Observations report a value. Calculations combine sourced values using a stated method. Gaps explain a value that is unavailable or not yet verified; they are counted separately and never mean zero.

Browse coverage by decade and subject

On a narrow screen, scroll the table sideways to explore every case.

US collection only. Observation counts exclude documented gaps; calculations are counted separately.
RoomThe homeThe budgetThe tableThe dayWhat had arrivedA day's work buysRoom total
1900s 3 observations 6 observations 4 observations 14 observations 1 observation 3 observations 31 observations
1910s 2 observations 1 documented gap 1 observation 1 documented gap 3 observations 1 documented gap 7 observations 2 observations 1 observation 1 documented gap 16 observations 4 documented gaps
1920s 2 observations 1 documented gap 0 observations 1 documented gap 2 observations 2 documented gaps 9 observations 2 observations 1 observation 1 documented gap 16 observations 5 documented gaps
1930s 2 observations 1 documented gap 0 observations 1 documented gap 3 observations 1 documented gap 8 observations 2 observations 1 observation 1 documented gap 16 observations 4 documented gaps
1940s 5 observations 6 observations 1 documented gap 4 observations 1 documented gap 10 observations 2 observations 3 observations 30 observations 2 documented gaps
1950s 6 observations 9 observations 7 observations 13 observations 1 calculation 6 observations 4 observations 2 calculations 45 observations 3 calculations
1960s 5 observations 7 observations 14 observations 1 calculation 13 observations 5 observations 3 observations 47 observations 1 calculation
1970s 6 observations 8 observations 18 observations 1 calculation 12 observations 5 observations 4 observations 53 observations 1 calculation
1980s 6 observations 12 observations 16 observations 1 calculation 14 observations 7 observations 4 observations 59 observations 1 calculation
1990s 8 observations 11 observations 17 observations 1 calculation 12 observations 3 documented gaps 11 observations 4 observations 63 observations 1 calculation 3 documented gaps
2000s 7 observations 12 observations 16 observations 1 calculation 17 observations 6 observations 4 observations 62 observations 1 calculation
2010s 5 observations 12 observations 17 observations 1 calculation 16 observations 6 observations 4 observations 60 observations 1 calculation
2020s 6 observations 10 observations 3 documented gaps 17 observations 1 calculation 1 documented gap 14 observations 1 calculation 7 observations 3 observations 4 calculations 57 observations 6 calculations 4 documented gaps
US collection 63 observations 3 documented gaps 94 observations 7 documented gaps 138 observations 7 calculations 6 documented gaps 159 observations 2 calculations 3 documented gaps 62 observations 39 observations 6 calculations 3 documented gaps 555 observations 15 calculations 22 documented gaps

Explore the sources behind all country collections →

Confidence & flags

A — official statistical series
B — official microdata, computed by this project
C — reconstructed from period surveys
D — scholarly estimate
Gap — no reliable record; shown as the gap it is

Reading the atlas

Provenance is in the scan-line: every exhibit's row names its value, confidence tier, the population actually measured, and the source record. Chart points and stage glyphs open the same record.

Rising series draw in petrol, falling in ember. An omitted illustration means no exhibit was selected, not that the object was historically absent.