Sliding Down the Mountain

Andrew Hacker wrote in the New York Review of Books several years ago, in a book review on affluence and its effects:

The average American family now has two and a half times the purchasing power of its 1947 counterpart. Affluence for such a family isn’t wealth; many have heavy debts and are unprepared for calamities. But they frequent suburban malls, crowd the nation’s airports, and are helping their children through college. Offer’s statistics suggest that at least two thirds of Americans are in this pool, whereas in 1947 only one in three were.

Question: is this what is happening in this decade of slow, grinding, economic decline? That we're slowly declining in 'affluence' to that of our parents/grandparents in 1947?