Assorted links XI
You’ve probably heard claims about middle class American income stagnating over the past decades and most of the gains in productivity going to the top X%. The following table lists studies that looked at income trends in the US over time. Which of these methods of income analysis sounds like it’s closest to measuring something you’d actually be interested in knowing?
| Income concept | Adjust for household size | Unit of analysis, 2014 |
|---|---|---|
| Gross income as reported on tax forms without government transfers | No | 165 million tax filers |
| Pretax, postcash transfers and no employer benefits | No | 123 million households |
| Pretax, postcash transfers and no employer benefits | Yes | 186 million independent adults |
| All national income including homeownership and government services | No | 234 million adults ago 20 and over |
| Posttax, posttransfer income with health benefits | Yes | 117 million households |
| Posttax and post- and noncash transfers and employer benefits | Yes | 310 million people |
By presenting the analysis plans without the corresponding results, you can arrive at a judgment with a clean conscience—no need to fear that you’re simply approving the study with your favored result. When you’re ready to see what studies and results these descriptions correspond to, look at Table 1 in the linked PDF.
Together with various antelopes, baboons form multispecies groupings that take advantage of the great vision of the primates and the better smell and hearing of ungulates.
Housing prices in some cities in China have increased more than tenfold in the past decade. They appear to be rising too fast relative to the growth of income.
[…]
Due in part to the one-child policy, there were 120 Chinese men for every 100 Chinese women as of 2005—in some provinces this ratio is as high as 130 to 100. […] One of the most visible symbols of this status competition comes through housing. […] This places a lot of pressure on Chinese families with sons to demonstrate their value through homeownership.
[…]
We found that home prices are higher and home sizes are bigger in cities with more skewed sex ratios. Strikingly, the sex ratio imbalance explained between half and one-third of the increase in housing prices in 25 major cities between 2003 and 2009.
See also Steganography in games: A general methodology and its application to the game of Go.