This morning the Census Bureau released its annual report on income — including median income, inequality, and income poverty — and health insurance coverage in the previous year. As expected given continued high unemployment, the report shows a substantial deterioration in Americans’ economic security between 2009 and 2010, including substantial income losses for middle- and […]
Author Archive | Shawn Fremstad
The Tax Deal’s Biggest Losers: 40 Million Low-Wage Workers Who Will See Their Taxes Go Up This Year
On December 6, the President said “there is no reason that ordinary Americans should see their taxes go up next year.” Apparently, the Administration staff who negotiated the deal found a reason. According to the estimates of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, some 51 million taxpayers overall will see part of the tax cuts they […]
Income, Inequality, and Food Prices: A Critique of Broda, Leibtag, and Weinstein’s “The Role of Prices in Measuring the Poor’s Living Standards”
Introduction and Summary: In “The Role of Prices in Measuring the Poor’s Living Standards,” Christian Broda, Ephriam Leibtag, and David E. Weinstein (2009) use proprietary data — the 2005 Nielsen Homescan dataset — to analyze differences by income level in the prices paid for food. They find that Nielsen households with incomes above $60,000 pay […]
One in Three Americans Lacked the Income Needed to “Make Ends Meet” in 2009; Young Adults Among the Hardest Hit
Today the Census Bureau released a report on trends in income, including median income, income inequality and income poverty, and health insurance coverage between 2008 and 2009. As expected given the increase in unemployment — which grew from 7.4 percent in December 2008 to 10 percent in December 2009 — the report shows a substantial […]
