(UNDP) – Material living standards can be better monitored, particularly during economic downturns, through measures of household income and consumption rather than GDP (see figure). For example, while GDP fell sharply (by 5.7 percent) in the euro area in 2008 and 2009, household disposable income stayed at precrisis levels. This can be attributed at least […]
By DIONNE SEARCEY and ROBERT GEBELOFF25 January 2015 (The New York Times) – The middle class that President Obama identified in his State of the Union speech last week as the foundation of the American economy has been shrinking for almost half a century. In the late 1960s, more than half of the households in […]
By Lyndsey Layton16 January 2015 (Washington Post) – For the first time in at least 50 years, a majority of U.S. public school students come from low-income families, according to a new analysis of 2013 federal data, a statistic that has profound implications for the nation. The Southern Education Foundation reports that 51 percent of […]
9 December 2014 (OECD) – The gap between rich and poor is at its highest level in most OECD countries in 30 years. Today, the richest 10% of the population in the OECD area earn 9.5 times more than the poorest 10%. By contrast, in the 1980s the ratio stood at 7:1. The average incomes […]
By COREY WILLIAMS21 December 2014 DETROIT (Associated Press) – Bankruptcy behind it, Detroit’s atmosphere swirls with the promise of better days. Charles Floyd Jones can only hope that the city’s good fortune trickles down to him and the 10 other residents of a tent city that’s sprouted in the shadow of a resurgent downtown where […]
(UNDP) – Over the past few decades the world has suffered deeper and more frequent financial crises that have spread rapidly to other economic sectors, creating uncertainty, affecting livelihoods and threatening social stability. In the most recent crisis global unemployment increased by nearly 30 million between 2007 and 2009, while current unemployment estimates remain far […]
(UNDP) – Since 1990 the Human Development Index (HDI) has been an important measure of progress—a composite index of life expectancy, years of schooling and income. This year’s Report presents HDI values for 187 countries. The global HDI is now 0.702, and most developing countries are continuing to advance, though the pace of progress remains […]
September 2014 (Harvard Business School) – Figure 11 shows that America faces similar challenges in problem-solving and numeracy skills. What were once American advantages in human capital have turned into disadvantages. Relative performance matters in global competition, where American workers must out-produce and out-innovate the world’s best. Vertical axis = % of U.S. adults in […]
By Matt Townsend 20 November 2014 (Bloomberg) – On a crisp Friday evening in late October, Shannon Rich, 33, is standing in a dying American mall. Three customers wander the aisles in a Sears the size of two football fields. The RadioShack is empty. A woman selling smartphone cases watches “Homeland” on a laptop. “It’s […]
By Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Sandra Maler8 September 2014 BOSTON (Reuters) – The widening gap between America’s wealthiest and its middle and lower classes is “unsustainable”, but is unlikely to improve any time soon, according to a Harvard Business School study released on Monday. The study, titled An Economy Doing Half its Job, said American […]
