The Pew article Republicans increasingly critical of several major U.S. institutions, including big corporations and banks by Ted Van Green (8/20/2021) includes the chart copied here. The charts show clearly that republicans are more critical than in 2019, but it would seem that gaps are more concerning. Republicans are more …
Read More »How did CEOs do during the pandemic?
Did CEOs take a pay hit like many workers did during the pandemic? The article CEO pay has skyrocketed 1,322% since 1978 by Lawrence Mishel and Jori Kandra (8/10/2021) suggests CEOs did just fine last year. Their chart shows that realized CEO compensation grew during 2020 compared to the average …
Read More »Is voting a right or a privilege?
The answer to the question is correlated with party affiliation as Pew reports in their article Wide partisan divide on whether voting is a fundamental right or a privilege with responsibilities by Vianney Gomez and Carroll Doherty (7/22/2021) as their chart here shows. Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents overwhelmingly say voting …
Read More »How does life expectancy in the U.S. compare to other countries?
Our World in Data has the answer and more on their page Why is life expectancy in the U.S. lower than in other rich countries? In the US health spending per capita is up to four times higher, yet life expectancy is lower than in all of these countries. The …
Read More »How much debt do students have by race?
The EducationalData.org post Student Loan Debt by Race by Melanie Hanson (6/9/21) has three excellent graphs such as the one copied here. It may not be surprising that Asians have the least debt given Asians have the highest income, but Hispanic and Latino debt is almost identical to White and …
Read More »How’s the labor market for college grads?
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s page The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates has a number of graphs related to employment for recent and not so recent grads. For example, their graph here is the percent that are underemployed defined as The underemployment rate is defined as the …
Read More »What is the connection between life expectancy and education?
The PNAS paper Life expectancy in adulthood is falling for those without a BA degree, but as educational gaps have widened, racial gaps have narrowed by Anne Case and Angus Deaton (3/16/2021) provides an answer. From the abstract: We construct a time series, from 1990 to 2018, of a summary …
Read More »How has unemployment changed over the last year?
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has an interactive graph of unemployment for cities from Jan 2020 to Jan 2021. Unemployment rates were higher in January 2021 than a year earlier in 376 of the 389 metro areas, lower in 9 areas, and unchanged in 4 areas. The largest over-the-year …
Read More »What is the distribution of global income?
The Our World in Data article How much economic growth is necessary to reduce global poverty by Max Roser (2/15/2021) includes the graph copied here. Note that all countries incomes are adjusted for price differences so it is fair comparison from county to country. It is easy to forget how …
Read More »Why did wages grow in 2020?
The EPI article, Wages grew in 2020 because the bottom fell out of the low-wage labor market, by Elise Gould and Jori Kandra (2/24/2021) provides insights into changes in the labor market this past year. Key find: Wages grew largely because more than 80% of the 9.6 million net jobs …
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