The pace of U.S. economic output growth was revised down slightly to a still-solid rate in the third quarter, but the momentum could be difficult to maintain in the year’s final three months. Gross domestic product, a broad measure of the goods and services produced across the U.S., rose at a 3.4% seasonally and inflation-adjusted […]
This brief discusses in depth the methodological issues of measuring income inequality in the US as discussed by Rose (2018). The primary issues concern different studies’ definitions of income, datasets, units of analysis, income measures (market incomes only; total cash income with government transfers; and posttax, posttransfer income), income adjustments for household size, and the […]
Piketty and Saez (2003) found that income inequality rose substantially between 1979 and 2002 because the top 10 percent of the income distribution took 91 percent of the income growth during that period. As the real incomes of the top 10 percent soared, the incomes of the bottom 90 percent stagnated. Piketty and Saez’s findings […]
Almost half of U.S. chief financial officers believe a recession will strike the U.S. economy by the end of 2019, with the tight labor market and growing trade tensions driving economic jitters among corporate America. Additionally, more than 80% of U.S. CFOs think a recession will strike by the end of 2020, according to the […]
A few weeks back, I wrote about a new study from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). It convinced me that, although typical incomes are rising slowly, they are still rising and that, over long periods, the increases are significant. To cite one statistic from that column: Average inflation-adjusted household incomes for the middle fifth of […]
The global economic outlook is shifting, which could lead to new turbulence in markets and Washington in 2019. The past year was marked by strong U.S. economic growth, supported by a burst of fiscal stimulus from federal tax cuts and spending increases. That, in turn, underpinned profit growth and the Federal Reserve’s decision to dial […]
California has the highest number of children and highest percentage of children living in poverty of any state in the nation.1 In order to help address additional strategies, in 2017 the California legislature passed Assembly Bill 1520 (Chapter 415, Statutes of 2016) directing the California Department of Social Services to convene The Lifting Children and […]
Employment rates of older men and women in the U.S. have been rising for the past several decades. Over the same period, there have been significant changes in Social Security and private pensions, which may have contributed to this trend. In this study, we examine how the financial incentive to work at older ages has […]
In 2015, average household income before accounting for means-tested transfers and federal taxes was $20,000 for the lowest quintile and $292,000 for the highest quintile. After transfers and taxes, those averages were $33,000 and $215,000.
Unless you’ve been hibernating in the Himalayas, you must know of the recent surge in economic inequality. It’s not just that the rich are getting richer. The rest of us — say politicians, pundits and scholars — are stagnating. The top 1 percent have grabbed most income gains, while average Americans are stuck in the […]
There are few issues, if any, more important than income and poverty. The most successful political jurisdictions, where national or sub national, are characterized by rising incomes and falling rates of poverty. A large and growing middle-class is key to that. But measuring the size and trend of the middle-class is easier said than done. […]
Piketty (2017) argues in favor of a multidimensional and relational approach to the analysis of wealth inequality. Speci cally, he suggests that social classes should be ana- lyzed in terms of the power and production relations between social groups, not just the percentiles in statistical distributions into which various groups fall. We propose such a […]
In the United States more than almost anywhere else, wealth and income are concentrated among business owners and landlords. And that club, blessed by capitalism, is becoming increasingly difficult to join. Business owners and landlords tend to be about four times as wealthy as the average American. That’s more than almost any other country included […]
THE GULF between principle and practice is often fatal for policies—and for political careers. Britain’s government faces a backlash over universal credit, a reform combining six welfare programmes into one. This was widely seen as a good idea about a decade ago. But a series of administrative failures, a senseless decision to make payments well […]
If you were to ask most Americans which is the poorest state in the nation, they might say Alabama or Mississippi, with their low average incomes and concentrations of African-American poverty. In fact, the state with the largest share of people in poverty is California. As the most populous state, it also has by far […]