Lower income inequality = higher self-regard and self-satisfaction with your state, apparently

Wrote a little about the growth in income inequality across the 50 states from 1979 to 2012 last week, and now here’s more, via CityLab. Check out this chart: Essentially, the states with the lowest real inequality — as measured by… Continue Reading

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A family of four (in the U.S.) earning $11,925 a year (likely) gets less government aid than a family of four earning $47,700. Thank you, Robert Moffitt.

Robert Moffitt is an economist at Johns Hopkins; most of his research is around the idea of taxes, health care, and welfare. Indeed, he has a huge study coming out in the academic journal Demography later this year/next year about the evolution… Continue Reading

From 1979 to 2012, only four U.S. states — Alaska, Arkansas, South Dakota and Hawaii — saw income inequality rise by LESS than 10 percent

Cool article in The Atlantic Cities on the growth of American income inequality from 1979 to 2012; essentially, in 1979, there were 11 states (and D.C.) that had rates of inequality (as measured by Gini) that exceeded the rate for the U.S.… Continue Reading

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London has 72 billionaires. Moscow has 48, NYC has 43, and San Francisco has 42. Ah, the 1 Percent…

If you’re looking for that kind of lifestyle, your best bet is in London, apparently. The city has 72 billionaires, which is 24 more than the next-highest concentration (48, in Moscow). There are 104 billionaires in Great Britain altogether, topped… Continue Reading

Tucker County, West Virginia is the least diverse place in America. Cue the eye rolls.

Randy Olson — a true “data visualization” guy — put in some work on the diversity of every county in the United States. There’s some detail on it here, and on his own blog here. Here’s how the process worked:… Continue Reading

Birmingham, Alabama is where college grads are the most segregated from everyone else, eh?

Birmingham has a pretty checkered history with another type of segregation, but now here comes some new research around the segregation of college graduates from everyone else within a given metro area. This is vaguely similar to previous research on cities where rich people… Continue Reading

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Let’s compare the 10 largest occupations in America in 1999 and 2013, shall we? (Pause for sigh.)

Before, we’ve talked about where jobs might be come 2022 — so eight years or so from now. But what’s happened to jobs in the past decade or so? Well, check out this chart, courtesy of Pew: Here’s the original… Continue Reading

What are the biggest differences between what the rich and poor spend money on? (And what can that teach us?)

I saw this article the other day and I was interested; here’s why. I grew up in the 10128 zip code — one of America’s richest — then ended up teaching elementary school in 77013 — one of America’s poorest.… Continue Reading