Faces of Poverty

Poor in NYC

A summary of new data:

The Bronx remained the country’s poorest urban county; the income gap in Manhattan was still higher than in any other county; and the poverty rate in Connecticut rose faster than in any other state.

And the relatively positive part of the local economic picture was tempered by the fact that the latest census figures from the rolling American Community Survey captured only the start of the recession.

In New York City, the poverty rate in 2008 was 18.2 percent — the lowest this decade — compared with 18.5 percent in 2007. Median household income was unchanged, at $51,116, but median family income rose to $56,552 from $54,846.

Those figures masked vast disparities, though, based on race, ethnicity and geography.

In the Bronx, the median household income was $35,033, and nearly 28 percent of the borough’s residents — and 47 percent of its households headed by women with children — were living in poverty.

Citywide, the poverty rate for racial and ethnic groups stayed relatively unchanged in 2008 compared with the previous year: 11 percent for non-Hispanic whites, 17 percent for Asians, 21 percent for blacks and 26 percent for Hispanics.

The proportion of people receiving food stamps increased in New York State by about a percentage point, to 10.6 percent.

Not Left or Right

But inside vs. outside?

UPDATE: Nate Silver sort of weighs in. UPDATE II: James Poulos responds to Nate.

Remember Who the Real Victims Are

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

"So much food. . .

. . . so much hunger."

What Does the Congressional Budget Office Do?

An Interview.

Some Commentary on Today's Bartels Readings

With thanks to David T. for the first two:

• Jim Manzi at the American Scene
• Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution
• Andrew Gelman at the Monkey Cage
• Economics of Contempt, some more Gelman
• And, Bartels responds to some critiques at Dani Rodrik's

If you find others worth looking at, post a link in comments. The takeaway? Identifying patterns can be hard. Demonstrating causation can be monstrously hard. [Updated]

. . . . And how does this fit in with the post-1973 data below?

What happened in 1973? . . . . .

"Entirely Arbitrary"

A good example of the kind of policy analysis (ahem) that shapes policy making in the actual world of politics.

New Census Data

Income down, official poverty at highest level since 1997, child poverty up to 19 percent, and women still earn 3/4 of what men do for the same work. Monea and Sawhill, at Brookings, have more:

Using data from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and others about the likely trajectory of the recession, we find that, absent other changes, the poverty rate will increase rapidly through 2011 or 2012, at which point about 14.4 percent of the country will be in poverty, up from 12.5 percent in 2007. As the recession ends and employment levels increase, the poverty rate will begin to steadily decrease though it will not, at least over the next decade or so, reach its 2007 level. In short, our results show that recessions can have long-term scarring effects for all workers but especially for the most disadvantaged, whose skills and attachment to the work force are already somewhat marginal. A prolonged lack of jobs reduces the amount of on-the-job training or experience that people receive, discourages them from making the effort needed to climb out of poverty, and can even lead to a deterioration in their health or family life that adversely affects opportunity.

UPDATE:

"Eight Questions About Health Care Reform"

Actual discussion of the substance of the policy issue, rather than the politics of it, from the Washington Post, no less.

One Stimulus Analysis

From the WSJ.

Budget Docs

For POL 1105, some potentially useful links and docs for the next few sessions:

• Budget of the U.S. Gov't, Updated Summary Tables (May 2009)
• U.S. Federal Budget, the Wiki
• Budget Explorer, with some simulations and budget-balancing exercises
• Introduction to the Federal Budget Process, from CBPP
• Treasure Trove of Tools to Understand the Federal Budget Process, from Congress Matters
• OMB, CBO, Recovery.gov (track A.R.R.A., the "stimulus bill")

And, for another visual take, from the NYT (8/25/2009):

Income and Ideology

From The Monkey Cage, where Andrew Gelman writes of these charts: "There are some differences between the different measures of ideology, but the take-home point for me is that the patterns are basically consistent: liberal Democrats by any measure are pretty well distributed across the income scale, and conservative Republicans are more concentrated among the upper incomes."