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Income, Wealth & Poverty

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Income, Wealth & Poverty

Publications

  • short reads

    Four takeaways from Tuesday’s Census income and poverty release

    On Tuesday the Census Bureau released its annual trove of data on income, poverty and health insurance in 2012. Here were some of the key findings on household income: New data show that median household income has stagnated for the longest period since the government began collecting such data in 1967. In 2012 the median […]

  • short reads

    Black incomes are up, but wealth isn’t

    Although household-income growth for African-Americans has outpaced that of whites since the 1960s, those gains haven’t led to any narrowing of the wealth gap between the races.

  • short reads

    King’s “I have a dream” speech, by the numbers

    Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech 50 years ago today on Washington D.C.’s National Mall and Memorial Parks has become one of the most famous, and quoted, pieces of oratory in U.S. history (though that wasn’t apparent to everyone at the time). But how well have the aspirations King so memorably expressed been realized? We ran […]

  • short reads

    Are blacks as financially well off as whites? Depends on whom you ask

    Despite large and persistent gaps between blacks and whites on virtually every indicator of economic well-being, about half of all whites say the average black person is about as well off financially or doing better than the average white person, according to a survey released last week by the Pew Research Center.

  • short reads

    Black unemployment rate is consistently twice that of whites

    Much has changed for African-Americans since the 1963 March on Washington (which, recall, was a march for “Jobs and Freedom”), but one thing hasn’t: The unemployment rate among blacks is still about double that among whites, as it has been for most of the past six decades.

  • report

    Job Market Shows Some Improvement for Recent Communications Graduates

    There is good and bad news in a University of Georgia report on the job market for 2012 communication and journalism graduates. As the economy slowly recovers, employment and salaries ticked up modestly. But they make considerably less money than graduates of others programs and face significantly reduced workplace benefits.

  • short reads

    Around the world, governments promote home ownership

    High on Congress’ long to-do list is deciding what to do about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two giant government-run companies that dominate the nation’s mortgage market (together they accounted for 78% of all mortgage-backed securities issued in the first quarter of this year). Which is another way of saying, Congress has to decide […]

  • report

    A Rising Share of Young Adults Live in Their Parents’ Home

    In 2012, 36% of the nation’s young adults ages 18 to 31—the so-called Millennial generation—were living in their parents’ home, the highest share in at least four decades. The number of young adults doing so has risen by 3 million since the start of the start of the recession in 2007, an increase driven by a combination of economic, educational and cultural factors.