[HarryHirsch]

You could say that houses are twice as big because nowadays you have the dual-income family, and a family pays more for one house because the amount of money on the supply side has increased, so prices on the demand side have caught up. The fact that now there is twice as much enclosed space is immaterial, a family needs a house to live in.

[arcticbull]

I suspect families were actually larger in the past than they are today, as evidenced by the rapidly declining fertility rate. In the 1970s there was an average of 2.48 births per woman, and today it's 1.77. My unsubstantiated opinion is that folks were willing to make do with less in the past, and again, city councils have forbidden building smaller buildings forcing the real costs up -- not through $/sqft but rather mandatory minimum sqft if you will.