Jon Gertner wrote a great article about the history of GDP and other social welfare indicators on the New York Times. The occasion for the article was a new “challenge to the G.D.P. …known as State of the USA” which was…
Blog Archives
History of GDP
In 2010, Jon Gertner at the NYT published an excellent history of the idea of GDP and its deficiencies. One paragraph mentions that median income is better than GDP, but the article focuses more on a “willfully obscure” initiative called…
Posted in MELI & Econ Stats
Rising house sizes are NOT an accurate measure of wellbeing
AEI employees, James Pethokoukis and Mark J. Perry, both wrote separate arguments that Americans are “substantially better off” now than in the 1970s because, as Pethokoukis titles his essay, “The median US home is 61% larger than 40 years ago.”…
Posted in Medianism
Median living standards would be higher and inequality would be lower with better zoning regulations
Kevin Erdmann at Idiosyncratic Whisk has done a number of analyses using median income. For example, below are two graphs showing an analysis of the distribution of median income across US metropolitan areas. The three lines on the graphs show that…
Posted in Medianism
Celebrate the highest median earnings in American history (unless your money comes from owning rather than from working.)
The BLS released data Thursday showing that real median full-time workers reached all-time high earnings last year: $347/week. This is cause for celebration, but realistically, it is only 3.5% higher than it was in the 1970s so it is pretty…
Posted in Medianism
How to improve median income statistics
The Obama administration touted news reports like this one from the Washington Post: Middle class incomes had their fastest growth on record last year. The Census Bureau itself was a bit more circumspect because they recognize that there is considerable…
Posted in Medianism, MELI & Econ Stats
Inequality in South Africa and Ukraine
Consider the economic wellbeing of South Africa and Ukraine in 2003. South Africa’s mean income at $10,400 was 67% higher than Ukraine’s at only $6,220 but Ukraine’s life expectancy was 67.4 years which is 25% higher than in South Africa at 53.7…
Posted in Inequality, Medianism
Medianism 