vitrine · a museum of the median family

The median family's century, behind glass

A decade-by-decade museum of the median-income four-person family's lifestyle. Every fact carries its source card and confidence tier; where the record is silent, the museum shows the gap.

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.

The rooms

One room per decade — the house cutaway, the six display cases, the specimen labels.

Decade 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 2020s

The corridors

Cross-decade arcs — diffusion, affordability in hours of work, budget composition, life expectancy — and the pairwise comparison set.

The walkthrough

The transect — the composite household at three stops across the century.

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 museum

Every fact is behind glass: its placard names the source, the year, who was measured, and how sure we are. Chart points and stage glyphs deep-link to their placards.

Falling metrics render in copper, rising in brass. Absent technology isn't drawn — a bare house says more than ghosts.