Average yearly earnings in 1980: 12,500.
Average house in 1980: 61,000
House: 4.88 years of salary.

Average wages in 2022: 51,500
Average home price: 392,000 (seems high, but let's even knock some of that off and say 350,000)
House: 6.80 years of salary using 350k.

I'm not economist, but without digging too much further I think this is fair to assume it is much more pricey to get in a home now than it was 40 years ago. Not to mention all of the new expenses today that weren't around back then. (Internet and Cell Phones come to mind) You can say you don't need those extra expenses, but come on, can you even get a job today without the internet or a cell phone?

Quality of comfort has definitely improved a lot in the past 40 years, but I don't think that we are better off financially than we were back then. And sheesh, socially I think was a much easier time to grow up as well. Kids today have all sorts of social problems that we couldn't have even dreamed of back then, and I came of age in the early 2000's where we all had a Myspace page and chatted on Aim with our social group after school.

Can you find a home much cheaper than the average? I'm sure you can. But it's going to be a fixer upper 30 miles from where you work. That's the one good thing about remote work these days, is that it enables people to move further away from the city for frankly a higher quality of life without sacrificing salary. But who knows how secure a job is like that.