Here is an elegant and revealing chart from Douglas Farr’s new textbook, “Sustainable Nation.” It comes from Chapter One, “Where We Are” and shows the growth in housing space per person over the last fifty or so years:
Note that this data is for the United States, and is taken from US census data cited in the text. The people in the corner show the average US household size, and the two shades are for housing type.
Farr pairs the chart with a happiness ranking, showing that the US is only 13th in the world for global happiness, despite our increasingly large homes.