vitrine · corridor · pairwise
1900s ↔ 2020s
Fact families the measure guard certifies comparable for this pair. Everything else renders as the gap it is. Every value links to its record.
A new car — affordability
⚠ Share-of-income mixes income concepts across decades (family income (period cost-of-living survey), total money income); a step between points may reflect the concept change, not affordability.
⚠ Price and anchor years differ by more than 3 years in: 1900s, 2020s — the hours axis is not strictly inflation-free there.
1900s · Tier C
$650 (Oldsmobile Curved Dash, best-selling) to $750 (Ford Model A) ≈ 2,600 hours of work
2020s · Tier A
$27,366 ≈ 909 hours of work
Budget composition
Inspect the folded categories
1900s
housing:
rent 12.95%
apparel:
clothing 14.04%
food:
food 42.54%
other:
fuel & light 5.25% + furniture 3.42% + tobacco 1.42% + liquor/sickness/amusements 14.51% + misc 5.87%
Life expectancy at birth
years (all races, both sexes)
⚠ Decades before the 1960s published white-only male/female life tables with no all-races total — the placard carries the sexed figures and the chart renders the gap rather than a spliced concept.
1900s · Tier A
48.2 years (white male), 51.1 years (white female) — see the placard
2020s · Tier A
76.5 male, 81.4 female (79.0 total)
Infant mortality
deaths under age 1 per 1,000 live births
1900s · Tier A
~100 per 1,000 live births
2020s · Tier A
5.525 per 1,000 live births (552.5 per 100,000)
Homeownership
% of occupied housing units owner-occupied
Average family size
persons per family
⚠ The 1900s datum (5.31) is from the 1901 BLS wage-earner survey — 0.7 persons above the Census 1900 national average of 4.61; the survey and census describe different populations.
⚠ The 1940s point is 1947 (first postwar CPS tabulation), not 1940. These averages describe family size, not the composition of a particular household or the cause of changes over time.
Household landline telephone
% of households
⚠ The 1900s source combines several technologies in one headline percentage, so its 5% is not plotted as a telephone datum.
⚠ 1910s–1930s sources counted telephones per 1,000 population, not households — those decades render as gaps rather than a unit splice.
1900s · Tier A
Telephone: 9.2 per 1,000 population (1898), ~5% of households. Automobile: <1% (registration incomplete pre-1910). Electricity: <5% of homes (urban only). Radio: not yet commercial.
2020s · Tier A
Cell phone 92.7%, landline 20.1%, garage/carport 67.6%
Women's unpaid home production
hours per week, prime-age women
⚠ From 2010s onward the source is ATUS (all adults 15+, hrs/day, narrower 'household activities'), not Ramey (prime-age women 18-64, hrs/week, broader 'home production') — a concept splice. ATUS facts remain available in their rooms, but render as linked gaps on this weekly axis rather than as a false decline.
1900s · Tier C
46.8
2020s · Tier C
Ramey 2005: women 29.3, men 16.8 hrs/week (ages 18–64) → ATUS 2024: household activities 2.01 hrs/day, all adults 15+ — see the placard
Men's unpaid home production
hours per week, prime-age men
⚠ From 2010s onward the source is ATUS (all adults 15+, hrs/day, narrower 'household activities'), not Ramey (prime-age men 18-64, hrs/week, broader 'home production') — a concept splice. ATUS facts remain available in their rooms, but render as linked gaps on this weekly axis rather than as a false rise or decline.
1900s · Tier C
3.9
2020s · Tier C
Ramey 2005: women 29.3, men 16.8 hrs/week (ages 18–64) → ATUS 2024: household activities 2.01 hrs/day, all adults 15+ — see the placard
Food's share of spending
% of household expenditure
⚠ Populations differ across the century — 1901 wage-earner families vs modern consumer units; every placard names who was measured.
⚠ The 1950s point is the nearest available survey (CEX 1960–61), stated plainly rather than back-cast.
1900s · Tier A
42.54%
2020s · Tier D
no reliable record verified for this comparison — see the placard
Weekly hours, manufacturing
hours per week, production workers
Road deaths per 100 million vehicle-miles
deaths per 100 million vehicle-miles travelled
⚠ A rate, not a count. Absolute road deaths peaked at 55,600 in 1972 and were still near 41,000 in 2023; what fell by a factor of thirty is the aggregate death rate per mile travelled. It does not measure an individual traveller's risk.
⚠ FHWA's own footnote records a definitional change: from 1976 the count includes only people who died within 30 days of the crash. Earlier years were counted on a wider window, so the two halves of this line are not quite the same measurement.
⚠ The 1900 figure rests on 36 recorded deaths against an estimated 100 million vehicle-miles. It is published, not reconstructed, but the exposure behind it is very thin and the travel figure is a back-cast.
1900s · Tier A
36.00 deaths per 100 million vehicle-miles travelled
2020s · Tier A
1.34 deaths per 100 million vehicle-miles travelled
Alcohol consumed per person
gallons of pure ethanol per person per year
⚠ Apparent consumption: legal beverage sales and shipments divided by population. The source table prints '(Prohibition)' instead of values for 1920-1933. That gap is not zero consumption or proof that no alcohol was sold; it is not interpolated and no estimate is substituted for it.
⚠ Not falling, on purpose. The line is a discontinuity, not a trend: the 1911-1915 level is not reached again until the 1970s, and the modern peak (2.76 in 1981) sits above every year since.
⚠ The 1900s and 1910s cards carry five-year ranges rather than single years, because that is how the table publishes the pre-1934 record; the annual series therefore begins at 1934.
⚠ The denominator changes at 1970, from population aged 15 and over to aged 14 and over. It is disclosed, not corrected for.
⚠ The table's own note records that data before 1977 are from Hyman et al. 1980 — the early half of this official series is republished scholarly work.