Yet it used to be possible to buy a house and support a family with children on a single income, and now you would struggle to do it on two incomes. That does not sound like a big success for the economy to me.

Perhaps a reason to be optimistic is that this trend will reverse, but it is hard to see a road to that. In the medium term, we are looking at a large population of retirees to be supported by a dwindling working population, that are also faced with servicing a massive debt that the older generation accumulated; at the same time faced by a rising challenger nation. That sounds like it could be dreadful, actually.