Economic

How we answer this questions depends on what we mean by best and the comparison group. For today we’ll look at the share of income by the top 1% and compare mostly western Europe countries. The graph here is from the world income database. It is good to be in …

The Economic Policy Institute article CEO pay has skyrocketed 1,460% since 1978 by Josh Bivens and Jori Kandra (10/2/2022) include the chart here. Definitions first: The realized measure of compensation includes the value of stock options as realized (i.e., exercised), capturing the change from when the options were granted to …

The Fraser Institute does an annual economic freedom report (9/8/2022), which ranks countries and interesting also states in the U.S. The main page includes an explanation of what goes in the economic freedom score. The most recent data, 2020, and the sub scores are available to download. The U.S. ranks …

The Pew article How the American middle class has changed in the past five decades by Rakesh Kochhar and Stella Sechopoulos (4/20/2022) has seven facts about changes in the middle class. Overall  though, The share of adults who live in middle-class households fell from 61% in 1971 to 50% in …

We tend to think of corporate taxes as a federal issues and less a local issue, but the article Reclaiming corporate tax revenues by Josh Bivens (4/14/2022) in EPI has some key takeaways: Depending on how it is measured, the effective state and local tax rate on corporate profits shrunk …

The Pew article, Young women are out-earning young men in several U.S. cities by Richard Fry (3/28/2022) provides the graph copied here. Overall, about 16% of all young women who are working full time, year-round live in the 22 metros where women are at or above wage parity with men. …

The World Inequality Database  summarize the paper by Bonneau and Grobon in the article Unequal Access to Higher Education (2/7/2022). In this paper, Cécile Bonneau and Sébastien Grobon provide new stylized facts on inequalities in access to higher education by parental income in France. At the bottom of the income distribution, 35% of …

The EPI article Wage inequality continued to increase in 2020 by Lawrence Mishel and Jori Kandra (12/13/2021) provides the graph copied here. As for the share of the overall pot: This disparity in wage growth reflects a sharp long-term rise in the share of total wages earned by those at …

The Our World in Data article Extreme poverty: how far have we come, how far do we still have to go by Max Roser (11/22/2021) provides numerous graphs that quantify changes in poverty. The most general graph is copied here. This one is for the world but users can select …

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 …