Findings of Note

“Poverty has grown everywhere in the U.S. in recent years,...

Mon, 20 May 2013 13:32:43 -0400

“Poverty has grown everywhere in the U.S. in recent years, but mostly in the suburbs. During the 2000s, it grew twice as fast in suburban areas as in cities, with more than 16 million poor people now living in the nation’s suburbs — more than in urban or rural areas.”

(Via NPR)

The census report listed the turnout rate for black men as 61.4...

Wed, 15 May 2013 11:21:46 -0400

The census report listed the turnout rate for black men as 61.4 percent… However, once noninstitutionalized felons — people who are not in prison but lost the right to vote as punishment — are removed from the tally of eligible voters, the turnout rate among black men rises to 68 percent.

With this recalculation, black men actually have a higher turnout rate than white men or white women.

(Via New York Times)

"[A new study] takes a careful and comprehensive look at some 2,000 decisions from 1946 to 2011...."

Mon, 06 May 2013 02:23:00 -0400

“[A new study] takes a careful and comprehensive look at some 2,000 decisions from 1946 to 2011. Published last month in The Minnesota Law Review, the study ranked the 36 justices who served on the court over those 65 years by the proportion of their pro-business votes; all five of the current court’s more conservative members were in the top 10. But the study’s most striking finding was that the two justices most likely to vote in favor of business interests since 1946 are the most recent conservative additions to the court, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., both appointed by President George W. Bush.
…
The arrival of Chief Justice Roberts in 2005 and Justice Alito in 2006 seem to have affected the behavior of the justices already on the court. The probability that the other three more conservative members of the court — Justices Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas — would vote for business grew to 56 percent from 52 percent. And the probability that Justices Ginsburg and Breyer would do so dropped to 32 percent from 38 percent.
…
Business groups have been enthusiastic litigants in the Roberts court. Adam D. Chandler, a recent Yale Law School graduate and a Justice Department lawyer, published a new study along these lines on Scotusblog (noting that his views were not those of his employer). Looking at friend-of-the-court briefs supporting petitions seeking Supreme Court review over a roughly three-year period ended in August 2012, he found that pro-business and anti-regulatory groups accounted for more than three-quarters of the top 16 filers…
He found that the Chamber of Commerce was “the country’s pre-eminent petition pusher,” with 54 filings in the period. It also had an enviable success rate: the court grants one out of every hundred petitions; for ones supported by the chamber, it granted 32 percent.”

- “Corporations Find a Friend in the Supreme Court” / NY Times

Early childhood education, among OECD countries (Via Center for...

Thu, 02 May 2013 16:35:53 -0400

Early childhood education, among OECD countries

(Via Center for American Progress. See: Report)

42% of Americans are unsure whether the Affordable Care Act is...

Thu, 02 May 2013 16:28:55 -0400

42% of Americans are unsure whether the Affordable Care Act is still law — 23% don’t know the status of the law; 12% think it was repealed by Congress; 7% think it was overturned by the Supreme Court.

(via Kaiser Family Foundation)

Amnesty International recorded 682 executions in 21 countries...

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 16:16:00 -0400

Amnesty International recorded 682 executions in 21 countries last year. This is the breakdown. The United States is in good company…

(Via The Economist)

Wealth Inequality in America

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 16:00:00 -0400

Wealth Inequality in America

“In 2011, only 15 senators backed same-sex marriage. Now...

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 12:50:08 -0400

“In 2011, only 15 senators backed same-sex marriage. Now 50 do.”

Another graph showing the evolution of public opinion on same-sex marriage:

The World as 100 People

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 11:05:04 -0400

The World as 100 People

The Bush administration vastly underestimated the cost of the...

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 11:39:25 -0400

The Bush administration vastly underestimated the cost of the war in Iraq.

(Via Mother Jones)

Percentage of Population receiving SNAP in 2012 (Washington Post...

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 20:12:00 -0400

Percentage of Population receiving SNAP in 2012

(Washington Post has a great corresponding story on what SNAP means for individuals in a Rhode Island town)

“Broockman and Skovron find that all legislators...

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 13:36:21 -0500

“Broockman and Skovron find that all legislators consistently believe their constituents are more conservative than they actually are. This includes Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives. But conservative legislators generally overestimate the conservatism of their constituents by 20 points.

The X axis is the district’s actual views, and the Y axis their legislators’ estimates of their views. The thin black line is perfect accuracy, the response you’d get from a legislator totally in tune with his constituents. Lines above it would signify the politicians think the district more liberal than it actually is; if they’re below it, that means the legislators are overestimating their constituents’ conservatism. Liberal legislators consistently overestimate opposition to same-sex marriage and universal health care, but only mildly. Conservative politicians are not even in the right ballpark.”

(Via Wonkblog. Study here.)

Women’s Earnings as a Percentage of Men’s, by...

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 19:42:02 -0500

Women’s Earnings as a Percentage of Men’s, by Occupation

(Via NPR)

"Although African-American family income has increased over time, white families have accumulated..."

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 17:32:52 -0500

“Although African-American family income has increased over time, white families have accumulated much more wealth. By tracking families, the study found that the gap between white and African-American family wealth increased from $85,070 in 1984 to $236,500 in 2009…[H]omeownership has been the biggest cause of racial wealth disparity, followed by income, the study found.”

- “Study Shows Racial Wealth Gap Continues to Widen” / USA Today

(IASP study here)

Country/cultural comparisons of science scores, by...

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 00:38:00 -0500

Country/cultural comparisons of science scores, by gender.

Details here: “Girls Lead in Science Exam, but Not in the United States”

Interactive infographic: Gun violence in America - How many years of life have been lost?

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 13:56:18 -0500

Interactive infographic: Gun violence in America - How many years of life have been lost?:

“Periscopic have taken FBI crime report data detailing every gun murder in 2010 (and worked with Jerome Cukier, who had also produced this with the same data) - and then combined the numbers with WHO demographic statistics to work out the impact in years lost by looking at the ‘age distribution of US deaths, paired with a likely cause of death at that age’. See what a year of gun violence looks like - and click the buttons at the bottom to see the data by age, race, gender and gun type”

(Via The Guardian)

“[The graph shows] the distribution of the extensive...

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 14:50:00 -0500

“[The graph shows] the distribution of the extensive deductions, credits, and other write-offs in the federal tax code, known as tax expenditures (former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan has called them ‘tax entitlements’).

The Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center estimates that for tax year 2011, the top fifth of the population will receive 66 percent of the $1.1 trillion in individual tax-expenditure benefits (the top 1 percent alone will receive 23.9 percent of the benefits), the middle 60 percent of the population will receive a little over 31 percent of the benefits, and the bottom 20 percent of the population will receive only 2.8 percent of the benefits.”

*The figures are for individual tax expenditures and do not include corporate tax expenditures. If corporate tax expenditures were included, the results would be skewed even more heavily to the top of the income spectrum.

(Via Center on Budget and Policy Priorities)

“A new CBPP analysis of budget and Census data, however,...

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 14:41:23 -0500

“A new CBPP analysis of budget and Census data, however, shows that more than 90 percent [91 percent] of the benefit dollars that entitlement and other mandatory programs* spend go to assist people who are elderly, seriously disabled, or members of working households — not to able-bodied, working-age Americans who choose not to work… People who are neither elderly nor disabled — and do not live in a working household — received only 9 percent of the benefits.

Moreover, the vast bulk of that 9 percent goes for medical care, unemployment insurance benefits (which individuals must have a significant work history to receive), Social Security survivor benefits for the children and spouses of deceased workers, and Social Security benefits for retirees between ages 62 and 64. Seven out of the 9 percentage points go for one of these four purposes.”

*This analysis covers Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and CHIP, unemployment insurance, SNAP, SSI, TANF, the school lunch program, the EITC, and the refundable component of the Child Tax Credit.

(Via Center on Budget and Policy Priorities)

"Union membership plummeted last year to the lowest level since the 1930s… Government figures..."

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 11:32:27 -0500

“Union membership plummeted last year to the lowest level since the 1930s… Government figures released Wednesday showed union membership declined from 11.8 percent to 11.3 percent of the workforce… Overall membership fell by about 400,000 workers to 14.4 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
…
Union membership was 13.2 percent in 1935 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act. Labor’s ranks peaked in the 1950s, when about 1 of every 3 workers was in a union. By 1983, roughly 20 percent of U.S. workers were union members.”

- “Union Membership Falls Sharply, Led by Decline Among Public Sector Workers” / Washington Post

Comparing national racial composition averages with student...

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 15:18:45 -0500

Comparing national racial composition averages with student population at six elite universities.

(More charts here: “How America’s Top Colleges Reflect (and Massively Distort) the Country’s Racial Evolution”)