The battle in Home Alone between 8-year-old Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) and two burglars known as the Wet Bandits has played out on screens around the world every Christmas since the film premiered in 1990.
And every year, the McCallisters' grand home and lifestyle inspire a tradition of their own for some viewers: They wonder how rich this family was.
The New York Times turned to economists and people involved in the film to find the answer.
The McCallisters are the 1 percent.
Early in the film, one of the burglars, Harry (Joe Pesci), tells his Wet Bandit colleague Marv (Daniel Stern) that the McCallister house is their main target in an affluent neighborhood.
“That's the one, Marv, that's the silver tuna,” Harry says, before speculating that the house contains many “prime goods,” including VCRs, stereos, very fine jewelry, and “strange marketable securities.”
The house is the best indication of how much money the McCallisters have.
The Silver Tuna, or at least its exterior, is a real house at 671 Lincoln Avenue in the Chicago suburb of Winnetka, one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the United States, according to Realtor.com. There appears to be enough space for Kevin and his four siblings, so everyone has their own room, but it can also accommodate an army of visitors.
In 1990, the home was affordable only to the top 1 percent of Chicago household incomes, and that would still be the case today, according to economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
The economists – Max Gillet, a senior research analyst; Cindy Hull, assistant vice president and interim head of the Financial Markets Group; and Thomas Walstrum, a senior business economist — made the decision after looking at data including household incomes in the Chicago metropolitan statistical area for 1990 and 2022, the home's property value, mortgage rates prevailing at the time, and typical taxes and insurance.
Assuming that the McCallisters spent no more than 30 percent of their income on housing, the economists also determined that the house would be suitable for a household with an income of $305,000 in 1990 (about $665,000 in 2022). would have been affordable.
In mid-2022, a similar home would cost about $2.4 million, based on the Zillow estimate for the Home Alone home. A home of that value would be affordable for a household with an income of $730,000, which is in the top 1 percent of households in the Chicago area, the economists said.
How are they so rich?
“Home Alone” never explains what the parents do for a living.
On the Internet, where this question comes up regularly, some people have suspected that Kate McCallister is a fashion designer because there are several mannequins in the house, which later appear in one of Kevin's attempts to trick the burglars into thinking that he is not is, home alone.
Todd Strasser, who wrote the official novelizations of “Home Alone” and two of its sequels, said in an interview that he was not closely supervised by the filmmakers. The instructions, he said, were essentially: “Here's the script, do whatever you want.”
In the book, he made Kevin's mother a fashion designer because of the mannequins and Kevin's father a businessman because it was “a sure thing,” he said.
He said it never occurred to him to explain in detail how the McCallisters got their money; he considered them to be “upper middle class” but not “super rich.”
The family has other trappings of considerable but not stratospheric wealth: they wear nice clothes and rent several vans to take them to the airport, yes, but when Kate tries to bribe an elderly couple to get their tickets out of Paris gives up She can come home, offers jewelry and cash, but suggests her Rolex might be fake.
“I don’t know how much the McCallisters made, but it sure did a lot for my bank account,” Strasser said.
A fan theory suggests that Peter McCallister is involved in organized crime. According to this theory, the McCallister house was targeted as a form of revenge, and Kevin's brutal violence against the burglars is the result of a childhood in which he was exposed to criminal activity.
The Times could not rule out this theory.
Uncle Rob paid for the flights.
A frequently cited data point about the family's wealth is their Christmas trip to Paris.
Flying to Paris for 15 people is expensive, especially if the four adults are flying first class, but Kevin's parents aren't paying for the plane tickets. At the beginning of the film, Kate McCallister tells a police officer – who is actually Harry in disguise – that her husband's brother paid for the flights.
This brother is Uncle Rob. He is a minor character in the first film, but the few mentions he receives suggest that he is overweight. He pays for the tickets and has an apartment in Paris with a clear view of the Eiffel Tower in which he can somehow accommodate 15 of his family members. (The film's sequel, Alone in New York, further suggests that Uncle Rob is wealthy, but this analysis is based only on the first film.)
A third brother, Uncle Frank (the mean one), lives in Ohio and travels with the family from Illinois to Paris. We don't know about his income, but we know he's cheap. At his brother's house in Illinois, he avoids paying the $122.50 pizza bill. While dining in first class on the plane, he tells his wife to put the crystal salt and pepper shakers in her purse.
This behavior could indicate that he is rich. According to a 2008 article published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, shoplifting was “significantly more common” among people with family incomes over $70,000.
Uncle Frank is also a typical adult character in the world of John Hughes, who wrote and produced “Home Alone,” said Robert Bulman, a sociology professor at Saint Mary's College in California who studies the portrayal of teenagers and high school children Film busy.
He said that a common feature of a Hughes film is the dramatic tension fueled by conflict between young people and adults, who almost always decide in favor of the younger person.
He noted that in Hughes' teen films – including “The Breakfast Club” and “Pretty in Pink” – class tensions are also often at the forefront and drive the story.
“His stories usually privilege the perspective of the working-class child or the poor child trying to gain access to a more affluent age group, for example,” Professor Bulman said. “But in Home Alone, it's clearly a victory for Kevin as a kid, but also for Kevin as a rich kid defending his impressive fortress.”
The film is not about money.
Home Alone set designer Eve Cauley was responsible for the interior design, such as furniture and wallpaper, in the McCallister home, which was filmed on constructed sets at a local high school.
She said in an email that the home was not expensively furnished but was intentionally “glorious and upscale” in appearance.
When the film was made, navy blue and dusty pink were popular interior colors, Cauley said. But she took inspiration from Norman Rockwell paintings and antique Christmas cards to use rich reds, greens and golds in the family home.
Hughes told her he wanted the house to look “timeless,” she said. “He told me he likes his films to look a little nicer and clearer than reality, as his purpose in making films is to entertain and delight audiences,” she said.
Cauley also had some advice for people seeking an answer about family income.
“With all due respect, fans who argue about parents' income or house expenses should just enjoy the film instead,” she said.
“After all, John Hughes and director Christopher Columbus created this heartwarming and comical film as entertainment for audiences to lift their spirits for the holidays. It lifted spirits and still does.”