alt Hacker NewsThe book the two income trap describes this. It talks about better schools etc but if you are competing with people that have two incomes as an individual you better have two incomes worth of salary.
The issues starts to arise that people with two income households are more likely to lose one of those jobs and that puts a lot of pressure on the finances if you need both jobs for your house payment.
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It makes more sense to me (both from a personal, and the bank's perspective), that a single person on double income goes to zero salary when he loses his job, thus its riskier lending to him with his monthly payment being 25% of his income, than say 2 people at half salary, in which case one person's income share of loans jumps from 25% to 50%, a financially difficult situation, but temporarily manageable.
You need more than two incomes worth of salary in any country that does income tax bands. In the UK, two people earning 30k each will take home a combined 50k. A single person needs to earn almost 70k to take home the same. And for council tax you end up paying 75% of what an entire household would pay.
The price of rent is set by local household wages.
If both partners typically work: rent rises to eat nearly all the gain.
If AI makes everyone 20% more productive: rent rises to eat nearly all the gain.
If minimum wages lift the bottom earners from $7.50/hr to $18.50/hr: rent rises to eat nearly all the gain.