The Bureau of the Census has just released numbers for Official Poverty Rate, as well as the Supplemental (the latter takes into account taxes and transfers, and is more relevant for thinking about the actual welfare of individuals).
Source: Census.
Source: Census.
I feel (maybe unfairly due to my own biases, my Dad was a “Depression Baby”, remembering my father struggling with the motel in KS, thinking about the 5,000nth time I ate macaroni and cheese or pork and beans as a child, I know my father was struggling and doing the best he could. But we still had terrific Christmases with my grandparents, But I still think back on those times, The struggling for the next month’s meal was so emotionally hard on my father, I think, I imagine how you think, about your Dad now. I don’t know how Chinese generally feel about “the after life”. But I think you MUST feel the same to me. You just hope your dad found that final restful “peace of mind”. Just hope your Dad found that place to rest.
I meant to say I liked this post due to my own biases. It got lost somewhere in the last of the wine/drink here watching Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock Holmes~~That I appreciate the topic chosen for this post.
Kevin Drum comments on this:
https://jabberwocking.com/measured-correctly-poverty-was-up-60-in-2022/
Notable in the first graph is that the increase in poverty associated with the most recent recession looks to be the smallest since 1975. The rise in poverty in 2022 is the result of transfers to households being cut in 2022.
Also notable is the rise in poverty through the 2001-2007 expansion. That is unusual for economic expansions. Real income growth wasn’t all that bad relative to other expansions:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=18OyS
The distribution of income, on the other hand, worsened considerably during the housing boom:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SIPOVGINIUSA
So it looks like a rising housing tide failed to raise all boats. The rich got richer and the number of poor rose as a result.
The World Bank, ans so FRED, doesn’t have a GINI calculation beyond 2020 for the U.S. but thirty years of deterioration in income distribution was apparently reversed in 2020. That 2020 improvement is apparently being undone now, based on the increase in poverty in 2022.
Basic income payments, which is what the U.S. dabbled with during the heady days of Covid-inspired transfers, work well. Andrew Yank has reportedly been in touch with No Names about another presidential run. That would renew public debate of basic income, I would think, since that’s the only claim to notice Yang has.
Kudos for a nice, perfunctory nod to poverty…
It might also have been noted that median incomes dropped in 2022…or that average real wages are stagnating…up only 0.3% since before the pandemic…a time of extraordinarily tight labor markets, precisely a time when economists used to assure us that real wages would rise. https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2018/02/are-wages-increasing-or-decreasing/
The question is: where are the Democratic politicians who are acknowledging stagnant wages and trying to cast the blame on Republicans? Instead, we all get is Democrats and liberal economists like Krugman whining about how ordinary people don’t appreciate how the good times are rolling! Gilding the lily about how workers were faring is a tried and true strategy that helped Hillary do so well in 2016!
This guy cracks me up.
“Kudos to a perfunctory note on poverty”. Now I will not mention it again, and instead mention some other unrelated thing. Makes me want to look up the definition of “perfunctory”, but I fear I’ll get sucked into a paradox.