Cars and houses per capita vs 1950s

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The previous answers were off base so let's try again.
Housing starts:

Per capita, housing starts and vehicle sales peaked in the 70s at best.
http://www.moyak.com/papers/house-sizes.html#:~:text=Some%20large%20homes%20did%20exist,good-sized%20suburban%20home%20today.

Lot sizes began to grow after the turn of the century. Early 20th century bungalows were one-storey or storey and a half dwellings of between 600 and 800 square feet. In most new houses of the early twentieth century, square footage was drastically reduced to compensate for the increased expenses of plumbing, heating, and other new technological improvements. Housing studies also attribute the reduced square footage to a decline in domestic production of goods. There was no longer any reason to have storage places for things such as home-canned fruit and vegetables, dowry linens, and supplies for making the family's clothes and bedding. People were no longer producers, but consumers.

People confuse existing vs new homes. Big 19th century homes were around by the 50s and new homes were crap by then.
Is it true that housing size, car age, and per capita car and home production were a lot better in the 50s? Besides the obvious social benefits of jobs being available, no layoffs, police being far less aggressive etc.
And in terms of quality, everything was wood and steel vs plastic now. If a 50s car collided with today the  the modern would be obliterated. Vinyl siding is a wood imitation also.
Although electronics has improved, electronics is meaningless without reference to the media you use it with. It is arguable that the best movies are classics and the things you watch on tv now are mediocre. In any case that's a minor factor.

1muflon1 · Answer

Is it true that housing size, car age, and per capita car and home production were a lot better in the 50s?

There is no indication in data that these things were better in 50s at least not in the US (which I assume you are interested in based on the sources & statistics presented above). However, a big caveat when talking about 50s is that we dont have much data about 50s - statistics was not collected back then on so many things as they are presently. Most datasets on things you ask about will date furthest to the 60s-70s. Nonetheless, to the extent we can extrapolate trends to the past there is no indication that the things you mentioned were better in the past.
Housing Size
According to American Enterprising Institute (AEA) the housing size today is almost 1000 sq. ft. per person larger than it used to be in 70's. If we extrapolate the trends to the past it is reasonable to conclude that per person people in 50s should have less sq. ft. than today. This is partially driven by the fact that average household size shrunk (i.e. there is less people living in the same house), but at the same time declining number of people living in a household do not seem to be able to fully account for all this increase.
Furthermore, as the next picture shows the real housing prices did not really increased by significantly since 70s. Hence this means that today for virtually the same price people can enjoy more sq. ft. per person of housing.

Car Age
You already show that average car age increased since the 70s in your question so there is no point in showing that again here. However, it is worth noting that also average price of new car increased since 70s (as shown below from the data provided by FRED) so in this case it could be argued that although cars have higher quality nowadays you are also paying for this higher quality in increased price. Further analysis would be required to say definitively if controlling for price and other factors the cars now last longer than they used to. I did not found any research on this maybe some other user can provide some.

Per Capita Home Production
Per capita home production is nowadays much higher than in 50s. This is actually rare case that there are relatively good data going back all the way to the 50s. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis which estimated the value of household production based on opportunity cost of doing housework using data for real wages the value of US home production.
The BEA only provides estimates for household production for entire US so in order to make meaningful comparison across time I calculated the per capita measure using the World Bank's population data for US. However, the population data go only to the 60s so I report both per capita and total measure.
As the measures show the value of household production increased significantly since 50s/60s respectively.

US per Capita Car production
When it comes to car production I obtained data for car production for US from the Organisation Internationale des Constructeurs d'Automobiles. The statistics for aggregate production start in 50s but population data only in 60s so again I provide both raw measure and per capita measure below.
However, note as an economist I have to say that car production - neither in total or per capita - can or should be used as an indicator of quality of life. For example, in 2019 Slovakia had one of the largest car productions in the world and  Slovakia (judged by gross output per capita) one of the poorest countries in the European Union and even taking Europe as a whole it would rank 22 by GDP per capita in 2019.

Cars and houses per capita vs 1950s

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