[lit-ideas] Re: Krugman on healthcare

  • From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 4 May 2006 11:21:57 +0900

On 5/4/06, Carol Kirschenbaum <carolkir@xxxxxxxx> wrote:


So what's considered a "middle-class" income these days? There's dirt poor/homeless (minimum wage and below), and there's million/billionaire--people whose response to gas shortages is to rush out and buy a hybrid, with cash. But can it be that the vast middle is actually "lower income"--or would be, if forced to live on one salary?


According to the U.S. Census Bureau (the top Google hit for "U.S. median income":

http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/4person.html

the median income of U.S. families in 2003 (the last year for which
data are provided) was $65,093, up from $56,061 in 1998 and $14,747 in
1977 (the earliest year for which data are provided).

Another document (http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/p60-229.pdf) reports that

Real median household income
showed no change between 2003 and
2004.1 Both the number of people in
poverty and the poverty rate
increased between 2003 and 2004.

Appendix B in the same document explains the definition of poverty,
which, I didn't know this although it makes perfect sense, varies with
size of family and number of children.

(Dollars)
Size of family unit
Related children under 18 years
None One Two Three Four Five Six Seven
Eight
or more
One person (unrelated individual):
Under 65 years. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9,827
65 years and older. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9,060
Two people:
Householder under 65 years . . . . . . 12,649 13,020
Householder 65 years and older. . . 11,418 12,971
Three people. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14,776 15,205 15,219
Four people. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19,484 19,803
19,157 19,223
Five people . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23,497
23,838 23,108 22,543 22,199
Six people . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27,025
27,133 26,573 26,037 25,241 24,768
Seven people . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31,096 31,290
30,621 30,154 29,285 28,271 27,159
Eight people . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34,778 35,086
34,454 33,901 33,115 32,119 31,082 30,818
Nine people or more . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41,836 42,039 41,480
41,010 40,240 39,179 38,220 37,983 36,520

I say that this "makes sense" but clearly only on certain assumptions,
the critical one being that children cost less than adults. Thus, for
example, for an all-adult family of nine, the poverty level is
$41,836, while for a family of nine composed of a single parent with
eight children, the poverty level is $39,179.

Another quite interesting fact is the rise in the female/male earnings
ratio, which has gone up from 0.589 in 1977 (when the median male
earned $40,236 and the median female earned $19,238) to 0.765 in 2004
(when the median male earned $40,798 and the median famale earned
$31,223). Plainly, the median male's earnings growth has stagnated
while the median female's earnings growth has improved substantially.
Thus the importance of two-income families in the new economy.

Cheers,

John


John McCreery The Word Works, Ltd. 55-13-202 Miyagaya, Nishi-ku Yokohama 220-0006, JAPAN ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html

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