Biden recalls hard times as single dad with a six-figure income

Presumed Democrat presidential nominee Joseph R. Biden says he can relate to struggling families, having been a single dad making $42,000 a year.

But Mr. Biden, 77, was far from cash-strapped in the early 1970s when he was the junior senator from Delaware raising two sons after his wife and daughter died in a car crash.

In a speech Monday to promote his plan to help middle-income families and child care providers, Mr. Biden again harkened back to those hard times.

“I was a single parent for five years with a lot of help. I had a good salary. I was making $42,000 a year. But without my family I couldn’t have done it,” he said.

How good was his salary in 1973?

In today’s dollars, he would have been pulling in more than $243,000 a year.