Alternate link to same video on Youtube.

Note that many of the statistics she gives in the video don't entirely match the statistics from the book. Maybe one was updated later than the other, or sometimes the years she's comparing move around (1970 vs 1973, 2000 vs 2003 vs 2006).

Note Warren is talking about the median, not the average, family. She said the husband's pay had not increased over that 30 year time span.  While median earnings may have stagnated, the average had not.

I don't feel the numbers really bear Warren out.  It's not clear to me that the median family is in as much trouble as she says they are.  Also, she tried pretty hard to bury the tax increase and draw attention away from it -- she isn't the first liberal I've encountered who doesn't like talking about how taxes have gone up.  Evidently, we are buying a LOT more government than we were in 1973.

Another factor is that these figures are for the median family, but they may not be representative of the typical family who goes bankrupt.

Here are the figures for household expenditures for a typical family, comparing 1973 with 2003.  All figures are in inflation-adjusted dollars:

	1973	2003	Increase	% Increase
Income	$38,700	$67,800	$29,100	75.19%	Note the wife didn't work in 1973, and that the husband's salary didn't significantly change.
Family Health Insurance	$1,030	$1,650	$620	60.19%
Mortgage	$5,310	$9,000	$3690	69.49%	Warren tries to make it sound like this is the biggest factor in driving people to bankruptcy, but looking at the table, child care costs are more significant, and taxes are vastly more significant.
Car & Gas	$5,140	$8,000	$2,860	55.64%	In 1973 the family usually had 1 car.  With two incomes, they need 2 cars.  And people with children now choose bigger cars, mostly for safety.  Cars are now better engineered, so they last longer and are cheaper to maintain -- the cost per car has decreased  22-28%.
Preschool / Day Care	0	$5,320	$5,320	Infinity	Mom's not home any more.
Taxes	$9,288	$22,374	$13,086	140.89%	Elizabeth Warren didn't want to draw attention to this.  The wife's income pushed the average family into a higher tax bracket so they pay a larger % of their larger income.
Clothes / Shoes	$3,571	$2821	-($750)	-(21%)	Globalization brought in cheap clothes from the 3rd world, plus people dress more casually now.
Food, including eating out	$6712	$5235	-($1477)	-(22%)	People eat out more, but groceries are cheaper.  (Warren mentioned only the 22% drop, she didn't give absolute numbers.  I obtained the numbers elsewhere so they're in red.  Possibly she didn't want to discuss the numbers in detail because they don't really support her narrative.).
Total So Far	$31,051	$54,400	$23,349	75%	Not including major appliances, electronics or retirement savings.
Left Over So Far	$7,649	$13,400	$5,751	75%
Major Appliances (Laundry, Dishwasher, etc)	?	?	?	-(44%)	Major appliances are better engineered, last longer, and need less maintenance.
Home Entertainment / Cable TV / Computers	?	?	$470	?	Increase is less than what was saved on major appliances.

Some examination of the taxes issue. The taxes mentioned above probably don't include payroll taxes. The federal budget alone was $1 trillion in 1973, in inflation adjusted 2005 dollars, while it was about $2.3 trillion in 2003. In 1970 the population about about 203 million, in 2000 it was about 281 million.

So the per-capita federal budget, in 1973, would have been around $4926, in 2003, it would have been around $8185, or a 66% increase. Note that means, for a family of 4, their share of federal taxes alone would have been $19704 in 1973 and $32740 in 2003. The figures in the table (which presumably include state and local taxes) are less, probably for two reasons: 1: the figures in the table don't include payroll tax or sales tax; and 2: due to progressive taxation, the median family pays less than their proportionate share of tax.