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http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/07/yes-the-middle-class-has-been-disappearing-but-they-havent-fallen-into-the-lower-class-theyve-risen-into-the-upper-class/ http:

http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/07/yes-the-middle-class-has-been-disappearing-but-they-havent-fallen-into-the-lower-class-theyve-risen-into-the-upper-class/ http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/07/yes-the-middle-class-has-be...

mathgladiator 13y ago
So, I'm not convinced that this is helping the situation: - Is this data taking into number of working adults ($/house-hold)? - What about the rising costs of living (like eating healthy)? [is this normalized based on any consumer metric of just inflation?] See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statisti...
metricman 13y ago
I'm also not really sure about this article. I find the evidence in that graph not to be compelling enough for summarizing with "bottom line:" and some real clean explanation. I find the trending cumulative percentage a little confusing to think about. I also wondered, does this mean there is some income bracket losing people? That is, no more families making 25-75k but still as many making <25k, so the <25k have fewer slightly-above peers? Then I wondered if maybe this means something about the <25k potentially having less income? That percentage stays flat, but those other earners are changing classification to rich... I don't really know. After writing this up I realize that what I'd like to see is the whole income distribution. This cherry-picks certain points on the CDF and plots them over time (the income cutoffs of 25k and 75k). What's interesting to me is whether or not we've gone from a unimodal income distribution to a bimodal one, in the sense that there's a trough between the lowest income families and the highest. If we have a 'middle class' we avoid that, and probably that is socially important. I think this graph is better for understanding the main article, which plots the Gini coefficient for income distribution over time by country [a few, anyway] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gini_since_WWII.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gini_since_WWII.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient

mathgladiator 13y ago

So, I'm not convinced that this is helping the situation: - Is this data taking into number of working adults ($/house-hold)? - What about the rising costs of living (like eating healthy)? [is this normalized based on any consumer metric of just inflation?] See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statisti...

metricman 13y ago

I'm also not really sure about this article. I find the evidence in that graph not to be compelling enough for summarizing with "bottom line:" and some real clean explanation. I find the trending cumulative percentage a little confusing to think about. I also wondered, does this mean there is some income bracket losing people? That is, no more families making 25-75k but still as many making <25k, so the <25k have fewer slightly-above peers? Then I wondered if maybe this means something about the <25k potentially having less income? That percentage stays flat, but those other earners are changing classification to rich... I don't really know. After writing this up I realize that what I'd like to see is the whole income distribution. This cherry-picks certain points on the CDF and plots them over time (the income cutoffs of 25k and 75k). What's interesting to me is whether or not we've gone from a unimodal income distribution to a bimodal one, in the sense that there's a trough between the lowest income families and the highest. If we have a 'middle class' we avoid that, and probably that is socially important. I think this graph is better for understanding the main article, which plots the Gini coefficient for income distribution over time by country [a few, anyway] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gini_since_WWII.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gini_since_WWII.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient