There are formulas for housing affordability. You shouldn't be spending more than 1/3 of your income on rent (and there's a proportion for mortgage payments, but I forget what it is). So it's easy to extrapolate from these numbers and determine for what percentage of the population housing is affordable, or whether a given household can afford a reasonable proportion of the available housing, etc.
It would be interesting to come up with similar calculations for, like, everything. Determine what percentage of one's income should be spent on a particular product or service, and then compare that with income data. Based on income data, is cable reasonably priced? Are beauty products? Is furniture? Rink time? Nonstandard-sized bras? Movie rentals?
Then they can work out all kinds of interesting things from this. Are feminine hygiene products affordable to households receiving welfare? What percentage of police officers can afford a family vacation to Disney World? To what percentage of the population is organic food unaffordable but nonorganic food affordable?
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