Median income by state: changes under Bush

[Dinner]

The good times... They are a rolling. Just ask DanS.

[:) Smiley]

Originally posted by DanS
That last graph doesn't tell the whole story. In truth, corporate profits and compensation have been in a tight band since the beginning of the great depression. The structure of our economy has changed very little in several generations.

how is it compared to other countries though?

[Dinner]

This seems like a good thread for this little tidbit from the WaPo.

Number of Uninsured Children Rises
Census Figures Show 8.3 Million Youths Lacked Health Coverage in 2005

By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 5, 2006; Page A06

For the better part of a decade, fewer and fewer American children have gone without health insurance each year, a trend that diverged sharply from the seemingly inexorable rise in the number of adults without coverage.

No more.

For the first time since 1998, the number of children younger than 18 without health coverage ticked upward last year by 361,000, along with the overall increase in the ranks of the uninsured, according to census figures released last week. Of the nation's nearly 74 million children, about 8.3 million, or 11.2 percent, lacked coverage in 2005, up from 10.8 percent the year before.

The discouraging development surprised some health experts, who attributed the change to budget crunches that led some states to curtail enrollment of children in government-subsidized plans and steady declines in the number of people who receive health insurance through their jobs.

Children without health coverage are three times as likely as insured children to lack a regular doctor, according to a report released last month by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Research from the American College of Physicians in 2000 found that uninsured children were less likely to be up to date on immunizations and to receive treatment for sore throats, earaches and other common childhood illnesses. A University of Texas study found that kids with insurance tend to have fewer school absences.

The uptick in the number of uninsured kids could play a major role in next year's debate in Congress over whether to renew the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), a nine-year-old federal-state effort to provide health coverage to children of the working poor and near poor.

"There is a message in these numbers," said John R. Lumpkin, a physician who is a senior vice president at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. "The only reason that number [of uninsured children] isn't worse is because we have Medicaid and SCHIP. . . . We continue to have a crisis in this country with kids who have no health insurance."

Congress created the popular SCHIP program in 1997, directing tens of billions in matching funds to the states over 10 years. The goal was to provide health coverage for children whose families do not qualify for Medicaid but cannot afford insurance on their own -- generally those with incomes as high as twice the poverty level, or $39,942 for a family of four last year.

In the first six years, about 3.9 million children were signed up for coverage, but enrollment has flattened since 2003. In part, that is because an economic downturn led some states to raise premiums, reduce outreach efforts and impose enrollment limits and new administrative hurdles, said Genevieve M. Kenney, a health economist at the nonprofit Urban Institute.

"There's no question that we don't have the same momentum nationwide," she said. "Some of it is natural as the program matures. But I think the recessionary period and the state budget crunch were real factors in interrupting the momentum. And I don't think states have recovered from that."

Enrollment limits or freezes lasting six months or longer took effect in Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Montana, North Carolina and Utah, Kenney said. Mississippi stopped accepting applications by mail. In Texas, where more than 20 percent of children are uninsured, the highest percentage in the nation, officials in 2003 imposed new premiums, eliminated dental coverage and began requiring families to re-enroll their children every six months rather than yearly.

"There was a $10 billion [state] budget shortfall," said Stephanie Goodman, a spokeswoman for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission.

Number of Uninsured Children Rises

After peaking at 529,271 kids in May 2002, enrollment in Texas's children's health insurance program plummeted nearly 44 percent to 298,731 by June of this year, state figures show. Goodman said the decline was more than offset by increases in Medicaid enrollments, but the two programs serve different populations.

The most potent force behind the recent increase in uninsured children, experts said, is the decline in employer-sponsored health insurance as rising costs prompt businesses to raise premiums or cut coverage.

The latest census figures show that a record 46.6 million Americans had no health insurance in 2005, up from 45.3 million in 2004. Among those who did have coverage, fewer were receiving it through their jobs. In 2001, for instance, 62.6 percent of Americans had employer-sponsored coverage. By last year the figure was 59.5 percent, census figures show.

Katherine Swartz, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, said a trend toward trimming business payrolls and hiring contract workers has made things worse. More than a quarter of 25-to-34-year-olds do not have health insurance, said Swartz, author of "Reinsuring Health." For 35-to-44-year-olds, the uninsured rate is 19 percent.

"Those are the prime ages for having kids," she said. "These are unheard of percentages of those age cohorts that are uninsured. And, of course, if they have kids, their kids are not going to have health insurance either."

Corralling rising health care costs is one way to boost the number of insured children, said Diane Rowland, executive director of the Kaiser Family Foundation's Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured. A more immediate step is better education and outreach because studies show that at any given time about seven in 10 uninsured children are eligible for low-cost or publicly subsidized coverage, she said.

"We lose some people because they are not aware that they might be eligible or they don't know how to go down and apply," she said.

Pride also is a factor, with some families reluctant to accept government help, said Lumpkin of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. "Part of our campaign is to convince them, 'You know, you pay your taxes, you might as well get the benefits,' " he said.

Researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this repor

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/04/AR2006090400958_2.html

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by DanS
That last graph doesn't tell the whole story. In truth, corporate profits and compensation have been in a tight band since the beginning of the great depression. The structure of our economy has changed very little in several generations.

There was story in the L.A. Times 1-2 weeks ago, saying that since Bush took office in 2000, corporate profits in California have increased 352% while middle-class wages have remained stagnant and the number of middle-class people has declined. Meanwhile the number of the lower-class people has increased while their average salaries have decreased.

This shows that the economic well being of most people and been decoupled from our economic engine.

[DanS]

Corporate profits have increased so much as a percentage because they were very low when Bush took office. They are still within the tight post-Roaring 20s band.

[DanS]

Originally posted by Oerdin
The good times... They are a rolling. Just ask DanS.

I haven't posted one of those threads for a while, because job growth has been lagging. More in the 125,000/month range than the 175,000/month range that I like to see.

[LordShiva]

Like any other statistical measure, median alone doesn't prove much. Show us means, standard deviations, kurtoses, etc.

[Odin]

Dan is really squirming now!

[DanS]

Why would I squirm on Poly?

I just call things like I see them.

[RGBVideo]

Re: Median income by state: changes under Bush

Originally posted by Bosh
A very interesting map this is, very interesting indeed...

from here: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/arc..._09/009444.php

It shows the amount that the median income has changed in each state since Bush became president.

Americans: pwned

Originally posted by Empress
Could one possibly argue that the economic prosperity experienced during the Clinton administration was due to the "trickle down" of Reganomics and the decrease in incomes could be due to policies enacted during the Clinton era "trickling down?" Not to mention, the fact that since Bush took office, we've had a terrorist attack on US soil and a world-wide rise in the demand for raw materials & OIL.

and some suckers STILL refuse the accept that they've been robbed

[:) Smiley]

Re: Re: Median income by state: changes under Bush

Originally posted by VJ

Americans: pwned

and some suckers STILL refuse the accept that they've been robbed [/QUOTE]

yeah, and this map doesn't even fully factor in the decline of the dollar against other currencies.

[Adam Smith]

Originally posted by Bosh
Well since the mid-70's wages have consistently grown at a rate that is lower than the rate of productivity growth (often markedly so, especially now as productivity is currently growing nicely but wages are relatively stagnant) that's not good and that's not sustainable.

Bosh:

The idea that wages have grown at a rate lower than "productivity growth" is based on two common misconceptions.

First, the wrong thing is being measured. "Labor productivity" is the growth in output per hour worked. But this attributes all growth in productivity to labor. This is clearly not the case. Computers become more powerful. Manufacturing processes become more energy efficient. These changes should be attributed to capital, not labor. Thus labor productivity overstates the amont of productivity attributable to labor, and hence the compensation we would expect labor to earn.

Multifactor productivity (MFP) is the growth in output relative to changes in both capital and labor, not just labor. The correct way to measure "labor productivity" is to use the labor component of multifactor productivity i.e., multifactor productivity times labor's share of earnings in the economy (in the US, about 67% for labor, 33% for capital). So actual labor productivity is only two thirds of what gets reported as “labor productivity”.

The following table shows the relationship between these concepts:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/prod3.nr0.htm

Table A. Productivity and related data, private business sector1, percent changes 2004-05


Productivity
Multifactor Productivity2 1.8
(=2.6*67% + 0.3*33%)
Output per hour of all persons 2.6
(AKA "Labor Productivity" = 4.0 - 1.4; Labor Component of MFP is 67% of this)
Output per unit of capital services 0.3
(AKA "Capital Productivity" = 4.0 - 3.7; Capital Component of MFP is 33% of this)

Output 4.0

Inputs
Labor input3 1.4
(how much more labor we use =1.3 + 0.1)
Hours 1.3
Labor Composition4 0.1
Capital services 3.7
(how much more capital we use)
Combined units of labor and capital inputs5 2.2
( = 1.4*67% + 3.7*33%)

Analytic ratio:
Capital services per hour of all persons 2.3
(AKA "capital / labor ratio" how much more capital we have per person; = 3.7 – 1.4 )


1. Excludes government enterprises.
2. Output per unit of combined labor and capital inputs
3. Index of hours at work; hours at work by education and experience group are
weighted by each group’s share of labor compensation.
4. Ratio of labor input to hours.
5. Labor input index combined with capital services input index, weighted by
labor’s and capital’s shares of nominal output.

More on MFP


Second, compensation is being measured the wrong way. We need to remove the effects of inflation in order to compare compensation over time. This is done using the Consumer Price Index, which measures the prices faced by an urban, wage-earning family of four. However, as the Boskin Commission showed, the CPI overstates prices by about one percent per year. This is because the CPI does not properly reflect the improved quality of products (safer, last longer, easier to maintain), does not properly reflect the fact that people now buy more products at lower-priced retailers (Walmart, Best Buy, Amazon.com), and a number of other reasons. If prices are overstated by one percent per year, that means that labor compensation is understated by the same amount.

Once you correct the overstatement of productivity and the understatement of labor compensation, the change in compensation is very close to the change in productivity.

edit: formatting the @#$%^&* table

[Kuciwalker]

Adam Smith

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Adam Smith

(both of them)

[Kuciwalker]

That was implied