Could someone explain the Younger's economic situation?

Grandma had been working all her life, and had just retired at the start of the movie/play. Ruth was working her a$$ off, both in people's homes, and doing laundry and ironing. Walter's got a steady job as a chauffeur that he's had for 5 years. Up until just a few months before the start, there was a fourth income coming in from the grandfather.

That family has lived in that apartment continuously for 40 years. It was a sh!thole, as we all saw. There had to be some kind of rent controls in place, such that the rent could only rise by a fixed percentage each year. Whatever the rent was, it had to be significantly less than the $125 per month note that Ruth talks about at the end.

Let's say it's $100 a month, which I doubt. That's $1200 a year. Let's say each of those four incomes was just $2000 a year, which is incredibly low. It's incredibly low when you consider that Ralph Kramden from The Honeymooners was living in an equally bad sh!thole, and they said on the show that he was earning sixty-two dollars a week in 1956, which is $3224 per year. The four incomes from the Youngers works out to be $8000 a year, worth about $64,000 today. Less $1200 for rent, leaving $6800.

Where are all four of those incomes going? Yes, a certain amount was going to send Beneatha to college, but that would eat up one income, at most. And if it were a city college, in the early sixties, tuition would have been free, or practically free.

Beneatha was 20. Just 2 years earlier, she wasn't even going to school, so whatever college expense there was didn't even exist. They had four incomes coming in, yet they were living hand to mouth - Ruth couldn't even afford the 50 cents that Travis needed for school. Where did all that money go?




I want the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well.