{"id":2032,"date":"2010-07-13T22:54:07","date_gmt":"2010-07-14T04:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/?p=2032"},"modified":"2010-07-13T22:54:07","modified_gmt":"2010-07-14T04:54:07","slug":"wapo-how-much-bigger-are-u-s-homes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/?p=2032","title":{"rendered":"WaPo | How much bigger are U.S. homes?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/voices.washingtonpost.com\/ezra-klein\/2010\/07\/research_desk_responds_how_muc.html\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/international_housing_graph-thumb-454x322-22215.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"320\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Census Bureau keeps <a href=\"http:\/\/www.census.gov\/const\/C25Ann\/sftotalmedavgsqft.pdf\">information<\/a> (PDF) on the median square footage of new homes, which you can divide  by <a href=\"http:\/\/factfinder.census.gov\/servlet\/GRTTable?_bm=y&amp;-_box_head_nbr=R1105&amp;-ds_name=ACS_2005_EST_G00_&amp;-format=US-30\">average  household size<\/a> to get average space per person. The EU, by  contrast, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.federcasa.it\/news\/housing_statistics\/Report_housing_statistics_2005_2006.pdf\">counts<\/a> (PDF) &#8220;useful living space,&#8221; of which there will presumably be lower  than the total square footage figure. Keeping in mind that the U.S.  figure is thus a bit inflated, here&#8217;s how the U.S. stacks up with  various other countries:<\/p>\n<p>If anything, how little ahead the U.S. is from Denmark or Sweden  surprised me. The McMansion stereotype of the U.S. holds up a bit, but  the average American doesn&#8217;t have that much more space than a Dane,  especially if you consider the total space\/useful living space  distinction. The Census Bureau also keeps very good data on how regions  of the U.S. compare, and how they compare over time. Here&#8217;s how homes in  different parts of the country have grown since 1973:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a onclick=\"window.open('http:\/\/voices.washingtonpost.com\/ezra-klein\/assets_c\/2010\/07\/regional_housing_graph-22218.html','popup','width=450,height=320,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0');  return false\" href=\"http:\/\/voices.washingtonpost.com\/ezra-klein\/assets_c\/2010\/07\/regional_housing_graph-22218.html\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/voices.washingtonpost.com\/ezra-klein\/assets_c\/2010\/07\/regional_housing_graph-thumb-454x322-22218.png\" alt=\"regional_housing_graph.png\" width=\"454\" height=\"322\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, the Northeast was out ahead for a long period, ahead  of Midwestern states that one might expect to have more space for big  homes. With the crash, though, things are evening out as all regions&#8217;  square footage tumbles.\u00a0 From <a href=\"http:\/\/voices.washingtonpost.com\/ezra-klein\/2010\/07\/research_desk_responds_how_muc.html\">Ezra Klein &#8211; Research Desk responds: How much bigger are U.S. homes?<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Census Bureau keeps information (PDF) on the median square footage of new homes, which you can divide by average household size to get average space per person. The EU, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[144],"class_list":["post-2032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-more-articles","tag-housing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2032"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2038,"href":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2032\/revisions\/2038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boulderblueline.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}