Given how correlated these trends are, I am not sure what is changing is the desire for any particular item, but the actual interpretation of the word "necessity". I suspect what is happening is that when financial security is low, necessity is applied as a term close to its actual definition, whereas in times of financial plenty it starts wandering up the scale towards "want".
We don't have a clothes dryer and the weather here is generally wetter than the clothes are. We just have two drying racks. Works perfectly for a two-person house hold. I don't think it's hard to scale up for more persons.
The fact that 50% of people still believe things like a TV, Microwave, and central A/C are "necessities" means we have a very long way to go. I guess I can be happy it dropped from 60%.
I'm really confused how people got along before A/C. If the A/C is broken or otherwise off, your windows are down and fans are running everywhere, and you are completely naked, it still feels like you are sitting inside a very hot wet oven.
I can hardly do anything but think of ways to get away from the heat (cold shower, going into the shade outside, going someplace with A/C) and falling asleep usually takes about four more hours than it should as I wallow around like a pig. Every 6-month 100-degree summer reminds me why I need to move out of the South.
I asked my dad the same thing and here was his trick to fall asleep at night:
He had a ceiling fan but no AC. So he would wrap himself in a blanket until he was soaked with sweat. Then he took the blanket off and laid on his sheet and let the fan blow on him thereby evaporating the sweat. This would cool him down and allow him to sleep.
There is a difference between "home air conditioning", i.e. central air, and independent A/C units. I live in Boston and would be insane to go the summer without A/C, but a few portable units strategically placed work fine.
Even still, there are countries far hotter than the United States which do not generally (or never) have A/C and they seem to survive just fine. Perhaps the definition of "necessity" is the argument here, but in a strict-leaning sense, A/C is hardly a necessity. None of the things on that list are, really.
I would give up Internet before I gave up A/C. I've only seen one home in Tucson well enough insulated to give up A/C, and it was built, brick by brick by the owners, and only had two very small windows.
Maybe construction techniques appropriate to local conditions are more of a necessity than AC? There are plenty of places where people have survived in similar conditions for hundreds if not thousands of years prior to AC.
Of the many ways that people handled heat before AC [1], most involved thicker walls and living underground. Air Conditioning has allowed the use of modern building materials (drywall & studs, rather than poured concrete or bricks), and therefore greatly accelerated the growth of home ownership.
As with everything, there are pros and cons--cheap electricity has simply led to the use of AC rather than natural cooling.
Slightly off topic, but related none-the-less: something that has always bothered me about "necessities" is that 99% of US households have a TV [1] but at the same time, ~12% are in poverty. [2] How do "necessities" like this tie into poverty?
(The statistic you point out has bothered me for a long time, but it's hard to control people's spending priorities, and it's not like these people are buying new flatscreens with welfare checks. You can drive around any college town during May or August and pick up a working TV for free off the curb.)
What do you mean by "welfare". Food stamps are accepted at certain locations for certain items. Unemployment insurance is a general check - but that isn't exactly welfare.
Spending priorities don't just stop with TV (which is probably the least offender since they can be relatively cheap).
I could drive around neighborhoods in Detroit (as far back as pre-2000) and see a lot of people with houses that were falling apart from disrepair, but they have a decked-out car with gold rims and hydraulics in the driveway... Or the ricers that can only afford a Ford Escort, but add some huge spoiler to it... People spending mounds of money on things that don't matter that much isn't something new.
If you are poor, TV is probably the only entertainment you can afford. America has lost or greatly diminished almost all its local communities. A poor person without television would need a lot of other local poor people without televisions to start recreating a community where people do things with each other.
(Nobody say "library". I love libraries, but in low-income neighborhoods they're usually less common and less well-stocked. If you can even afford to get there and back.)
I'm rather blown away that 49% of 18-29 year-olds consider a land line phone to be a necessity.
I think the last time I had a land line was a decade ago, when I was 17. And I live in the decidedly non-cutting-edge midwest. Even my parents haven't had a land line in years.
When I was laid off a little over a month ago, I was looking for things to get rid of. Even though I have a cellphone, I kept the landline: I knew I was going to be doing a lot of interviews over the phone, and I knew that my cellphone drops a lot of calls and generally sounds crappy inside the house.
That said, I boggle at the clothes dryer rank.
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