How has the size of housing in the U.S. changed over the past century or so? With data collected from the BLS, Census Bureau, and other sources, I took cross sectional data from each year to find the average floor area (square feet) and also average floor area (per person also in sq ft). The data represents newly built single-family homes, specifically the average size; this may prove sub-optimal, as a small subset of extremely large (or small) houses could potentially skew the numbers. Regardless, the results were quite interesting.

Over time, we can see that the average floor area has been steadily increasing. According to the linear regression equation on the chart, an increase in one year will yield an 18.5 square feet increase in the average floor area.

Predicted (linear) Average Floor Area = 18.498x – 34,809

where x = Year

An example would be to plug in the year 2020

Average Predicted Floor Area = 18.498 x (2020) – 34809 which equals 2,556.96 square feet

This scatter-plot shows the average floor area in square feet per person:

Albeit hard to see, the square foot per person has increased at a much faster rate than only square feet. This may be a better representation of the information:

We see that from 1920 to 2014, much has changed regarding the size of houses and also how much space people have. Over the past 95 years, average floor area has increased from 1048 square feet to 2657 square feet, which equates to a 2.5x increase! Furthermore, the average floor area per person has more than quadrupled, from 242 square feet to 1046! Essentially, it’s likely that one person nowadays has the same amount of space as a family back in the 1920s!

Using 1920 as the base year:

So we know that there has been a dramatic increase in average housing size and average floor area per person. But why? Well, there are numerous factors, but we could potentially take a look at a few:

These only touch the tip of the iceberg. Are there any more? Comment them below 🙂