More Need Government Aid

In the midst of the most severe economic contraction since the inauguration of the New Deal state, it's unsurprising that a record number of Americans find themselves on government anti-poverty programs. Fifty million Americans now receive some sort of anti-poverty aid from the government, up 17% since 2007. The Medicaid caseload has grown by 16% and cost is up 35% in nominal terms, the food stamp case by nearly 50% and the cost up 83%, and four times as many receive unemployment insurance (which has been expanded as an anti-crisis measure). The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program (TANF), a cash-aid program colloquially called welfare, has seen rolls and costs increase by only 18% and 22% respectively (it's worth noting that TANF is still a relatively small program and a drastically scaled down version of the older and more generous and expensive of Aid to Families with Dependent Children).

Note: all price increases are in nominal terms which makes program costs appear to have grown slightly faster than they really have, though the 2007-2010 period has seen very limited inflation.

Births Down for the Second Straight Year

Like all recessions, this one seems to have lowered birth rates in America. The birth rate in 2009 was 13.5 per 1000 people, the lowest in a century. The number of births was down 2.6% from 2008 which in turn was lower than in 2007 (see graph). Such a decline looks insignificant on the graph to the right but it is important to remember that since the population is growing the number of birth rates should be increasing steadily if there were no change in birth rates. It's also important to note that the decline in births over the course of the 1960s represents simply the end of the baby boom and a return to normal birth rates.

Experts attribute the decline in births to the fact that many are loathe to have children in difficult economic times and due to a decline in immigration to the United States. Yet, even as a other countries have suffered similar circumstances, birth rates are not falling universally. Germany and France have seen their birth rates rise in recent years, albeit from substantially lower baselines. The fertility rate in the United Kingdom is the highest in nearly forty years.

Despite trends in different directions, the United States has very high birth rates compared to other rich countries, as well as the world's largest number of immigrants, so most believe that the sort of demographic decline affecting countries like Japan or Italy is not a threat to the United States.

Recovery Slowing.

GDP estimates for the second quarter of 2010 were revised down today from 2.4% to 1.6% annualized growth. Economists had estimated that the forecast would be revised down even further to 1.3% or 1.4%. The new numbers confirm fears that the recovery has begun to stall and that growth may continue at a lower than expected pace. The downward revisions were expected after June numbers, released earlier in August, revealed a sharp deceleration of business inventory investment and a ballooning trade deficit that subtracted 3.4% from GDP -- the largest such deficit in 63 years. Consumer spending, the largest segment of the economy, grew for the fourth straight quarter, though only at a 2% rate.

Americans, Pew Research Unsure what to Think about Muslims

A new Pew Poll reveals that Americans are conflicted on their acceptance of Islam, and the media is equally uncertain how to report the results. 30% have a favorable view of Islam, 38% have an unfavorable view and 32% refused to answer or volunteered that they didn't know. 35% believe Islam more likely than other religions to promote violence, while 42% disagree. 51% oppose the building of an Islamic Community Center in Lower Manhattan (34% support rights of the developer and 15% don't know) but just 25% think local communities should generally be allowed to prohibit mosques (62% say that Muslims should enjoy the same rights as other Americans, 13% weren't sure) suggesting that some oppose Cordoba House out of Islamophobia, others out of respect for Ground Zero. Feelings on Islam, were divided significantly along lines of age, partisan affiliation and education.

The responses, which suggest widely varied American opinion about Islam and Muslims left the media confused. The AP noted that a plurality of Americans didn't see Islam as any more likely to be violent than other religions, while the USA Today opened their story with the comment that Americans may not know much about Islam, "but that doesn't stop many from saying [they] don't like it." France's AFP found contradiction in the fact that support for Islam has dropped off since 2005 even as fewer see the religion as violent (actually belief in the inherent violence or nonviolence of Islam have both dropped with "don't know" gaining).

Many Polls, Few Answers on Taxes

The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts set are to expire this year and Congress sits ready to begin debating which of them to extend and which to let expire. Several media outlets have begun polling on public opinion on the issue, and it seems that the polling can reveal show whatever the pollster wants to see. According to Reuters, 49% of Americans want all of the tax cuts extended while just 46% want the tax cuts rolled back for low and middle-income tax brackets only (31%) or letting all of the tax cuts expire (15%). On the other hand CNN finds just 18% favor extending the tax cuts at all brackets while 51% want to raise taxes "to their previous level" on families making over $250,000 per year while preserving tax cuts for lower-income groups (an option that is technically impossible since the first $250,000 of income would continue to be taxed at the reduced rate) and 18% favor increased taxes for all income groups.

What can explain such divergent results which are nearly statistically impossible given the margins of error (+/-3% in each poll)?

Reuters found broad support for continuing all tax-cuts asking:

"As you may know, the tax cuts passed during George W. Bush's administration lowered taxes by reducing maximum income tax rate for all Americans. These tax cuts are set to expire at the end of 2010, meaning tax rates would go back to what they were before the Bush tax laws. Congress is currently considering whether to let these tax cuts expire or extend them. Which of the following comes closest to your own view on what action Congress should take?:

-Let the tax cuts expire for all Americans

-Let tax cuts expire only for people who earn more than $200,000 a year

-Extend the tax cuts for all Americans"

CNN found opposition asking: "As you may know, the tax cuts passed into law when George W. Bush was president are set to expire this year. Unless a new bill is passed, federal income tax rates will rise to the level they were at when those cuts were enacted. Which of the following statements comes closest to your view:

-Those tax cuts should continue for all Americans regardless of how much money they make

-Those tax cuts should continue for families that make less than 250 thousand dollars a year, but taxes should rise to previous levels for families who make more than that amount

-Taxes should rise to the previous level for all Americans regardless of how much money they make"

Perhaps the respondents didn't understand that Reuters was referring to individuals and CNN to families thus respondents to the Reuters poll felt the tax cuts for high earners benefited wealthier taxpayers than did the respondents to the CNN poll

Perhaps respondents have a bias toward possible answers that they hear later in the poll

Perhaps the survey methodology was in some way flawed.

It's hard to know, but this ought to remind us not to believe any single poll we read.

30% of Chinese GDP off the Books

A new study from Credit Suisse and Beijing think-tank China Reform Foundation shows that China is richer -- and much more unequal -- than official figures show. Chinese citizens hide 9.3 trillion yuan (or about USD$1.4 trillion), most of it "illegal or quazi-legal" from sources like kickbacks and payoffs. The distribution of the hidden wealth is highly-skewed; the richest 10% of households have triple the income reported by official figures, the poorest 10% just 13% more. The official gap between the rich and the poor in China is high, and this study suggests that actual income inequality might be much greater.

According to Weng Xiaolu, the study's author, suggests that corruption and state capitalist are to blame for the hidden and unequally distributed income, a view echoed by Bloomberg News which fears that increasing inequality could bring social unrest to China.

Meg Whitman's Plans Flawed?

A group of liberal economists, unsurprisingly, have taken issue with the data used and conclusions drawn by California Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's economic proposals. Economists from throughout California signed the letter, in support of a report written by UC-Berkley's Michael Reich and released through the left-wing think tank the Center for American Progress, and which concluded that "the evidence and theory that Whitman uses to diagnose California's problems are unscientific and an unsound basis for policy." Reich specifically criticizes Whitman's contention that the California economy is sputtering because residents are overtaxed and businesses over-regulated, noting that the study she cites has been criticized as "schlock science" and that her measurement of individual taxes takes into account only California's high income tax and not its low property tax. On Whitman's contention that government is bloated, the letter notes that California ranks 48th of 50 in government employees per capita (of course running a state has a certain level of fixed costs, so perhaps a per capita measure isn't a fair way to measure the most populous state).

Reich and his colleagues find Whitman's solutions no more convincing than her diagnosis of the problems, noting that her plan to solve a $20 billion deficit includes $15 billion in service cuts and billions in tax cuts, numbers which "do not add up to $20 billion."

The State Republican Party declared that the report was partisan but, according to news articles didn't dispute any specific claims made. Even the liberal economists concede that Democratic candidate Jerry Brown has released too little information to conduct a similar analysis on his proposals to fix California's ailing economy.

Read the full report here

Read the letter signed by California economists here

Tallying up the Costs in Iraq

The Christian Science Monitor compiled numbers on the Iraq War from a variety of sources, as the United States begins to draw down combat troops in that country.

Among the findings:

The United States has spent $751 billion in Iraq to date (through the end of FY2010) with an addition $51 billion planned for FY2011. (Congressional Research Service)

4733 foreign troops have been killed: 4415 American, 179 British and 139 from other countries (iCasualties)

107,000-116,000 Iraqis have been killed, 9,537 of them soldiers (as of June 29, 2010). Though, as the graph below shows, civilian casualties have been decreasing (IraqBodyCount.org and Brookings Institution)

Even Sham Accupuncture Eases Pain

A new study from the MD Anderson Cancer Center joins the substantial and conflicting literature about the efficacy of acupuncture. It suggests that acupuncture helps to ease knee pain, but that real acupuncture works no better than the insertion of needles at non-accupuncture points. Compared to an untreated group those who received both sham and real acupuncture treatments saw statistically significant declines in perceived pain of about one point on a subjective scale of one to seven. A smaller, but still statistically significant, difference was recorded between those who were treated by practitioners who told patients "I've had a lot of success with treating knee pain" versus those who were told "it may or may not work for you," further suggesting some sort of placebo effect is responsible for the positive effects of acupuncture.

However, the study's methodology may have "blurred the lines between real and fake" according to the New York Times. The "real" acupuncture that was studied involved inserting needles at predefined points, rather than points selected on a pateint-by-patient basis within a predefined area. The "fake" acupuncture was applied by licensed acupuncturists who may have given treatments similar to real acupuncture.

About Those Tax Cuts...

The 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts are set to expire and a debate about which if any to extend is heating up in a time amidst concerns about a weak recovery and a booming deficit pulling in opposite directions. Republicans want to retain all of the tax cuts, while the Democrats want to retain tax cuts for low and middle-income earners and eliminate them for the top two tax brackets. Republicans say this will hit small businesses that file as individuals and thereby the people they might employ, Democrats say it will target the wealthy who have accrued a greatly increasing percentage of wealth in recent decades.

The Brookings Institution and Christian Science Monitor try to get a sense of who is right. Only about 2.5% of businesses that file as individuals would be affected under the proposal offered by President Obama -- to allow tax cuts to expire on income over $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for couples. But these 2.5% of businesses make up almost 50% of business income as shown here and in more detail here (note: these data are broken down by type of business -- most high earning small businesses file as S corporations or partnerships, while most lower-earning businesses file as sole proprietorships). Most of these high earning businesses are professional service providers (investors, lawyers, doctors, dentists etc.) or small chains.

So would higher taxes on the most successful small businesses retard job growth? The evidence on that is mixed according to Brookings. And there is a danger in the other direction as well; the government borrowing necessary to finance continued tax cuts at a time of deep budget deficits could crowd-out these businesses looking to borrow. And, as the past few years have shown us, lack of access to capital undoubtedly retards hiring.

Cherry Picking

Ruth Marcus, a deficit-hawk from the Washington Post's editorial page and Brian Riedl from the right-wing Heritage Foundation have accused each other of cherry picking economic data to support their respective contentions (that Congress should allow the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts to expire or that Congress should renew them). The spat began with an op-ed from two weeks ago where Marcus criticized Republicans for their constant insistence that taxes ought to always be cut. To illustrate her argument that Republicans were out of touch with reality she pointed to a widely circulated quote from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in which he claimed, "There's no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue. They increased revenue, because of the vibrancy of these tax cuts in the economy." Marcus pointed out that government revenues did indeed fall -- from 21% of GDP in 2000, the year before the first tax cuts were enacted to 17.5% in 2007. (As, Marcus herself noted later, McConnell was right that gross tax revenue itself increased over the period following the Bush tax cuts, but given that that increase was only about rate of inflation; for McConnell to be correct, he have to assume that without tax cuts, real economic growth would have been zero.)

In response, conservative supporter of the Bush tax cuts, Brian Riedl claimed that choosing the year 2000 as a starting point was unfair because that year marked a high-water mark for government revenues. He claimed that longer term data show that since the Bush tax cuts, revenue has been relatively consistent with its average over the past half-century and proves his point with a graph entitled "Surging Spending is the Cause of Rising Deficits" (shown at the bottom of the page, the graph actually shows that future deficits will be caused by rising spending, but that the current ones are caused only by a combination of low taxes and high spending).

Last week Marcus shot back, accusing Riedl of cherry picking of his own. The Heritage Foundation graph bases its spending projections on the idea that spending on existing programs grow at the rate of GDP growth, while the Office of Management of Budget and Congressional Budget Office assume that it will grow at the lower rate of inflation. Under more typical assumptions, tax cuts will account for 60% of the projected deficit by 2019.

Obama, US Less Popular in Arab World

The Brookings Institution and Zogby have released a poll investigating Arab attitudes towards the United States and President Obama and the results aren't encouraging. The survey was taken in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon, and the United Arab Emirates and was not differentiated by country. Just one year after 51% described themselves as hopeful about Obama's policy toward the Middle East and 15% as discouraged, those numbers have reversed to 16% and 63% respectively. Arabs see the United States and Israel as threats, and perhaps because of this increasingly believe a nuclear armed Iran would be good for the region as a whole (by 57/21 up from 44/29 in 2008 29/46 in the heady days last year).

While the media have mostly worriedly searched for the causes of the discontent (eg. this story from Voice of America), Will Inboden from Foreign Policy distrusts opinion polls in countries where freedom of expression is constrained and notes that more Arabs are more likely to travel to the United States and buy American products and less likely to hold anti-American demonstrations.

New Features for the TwD Web Site

We are pleased to announce an update of the TeachingWithData.org Web site! This upgrade provides several new features:

• the ability to submit electronic copies of or links to your favorite data-related teaching resources to the TwD collection


• the option to create a Reading List of TwD resources for personal use or to share with others


• the "My Portfolio" tool allowing you to keep track of your teaching resource submissions.
  

To take advantage of these features, you need to access the site through an OpenID account. At this time, TwD is accepting accounts from Yahoo!, Google, AOL, and OpenID. If you don't already have an account, you can create one on the OpenID Foundation Web site, openid.net. You are welcome to access TeachingWithData.org without logging in, and you will still be able to browse, search, view, and access resources.

Our updated site also has links to TwD's LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter feeds. We will be posting the latest Data in the News, Spotlights, and News and Announcements to these sites.

TwD has continued to build its collection of resources for bringing data into social science classrooms. We now have more than 800 resources, and the number continues to grow. We invite you to submit data-related resources that you have created or used in your classroom. You can learn how to do so by going to Submitting an Electronic Resource to the TeachingWithData.org Collection under the User Support link. Also available in User Support is a step-by-step guide to logging into TwD and creating a Reading List.

We are excited about the changes to our site and hope you find TwD a valuable resource. Please submit comments or suggestions to twdstaff@icpsr.umich.edu.

Katherine R. Rowell

Katherine R. Rowell has practiced a "learning-by-doing" educational approach as a sociology instructor at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio, since 1996. Leading the Sinclair Sociology Department's work on the American Sociology Association's Integrating Data Analysis project and development of several course modules introducing students to sociological research techniques is a part of that approach.

"I believe that a commitment to high-quality teaching standards is necessary in order to help Sinclair students succeed," says Rowell.

The course modules are available through TeachingWithData.org.

Rowell's course, Global Poverty: Causes, Consequences and Cures, is an introduction to basic social science research methodology. Students complete an academic research project and an applied research project, and write a research proposal for a future project. The class includes a three-day visit to Nogales, Mexico, which gives students an opportunity to experience briefly life in a developing country.

One of Rowell's students, Katie Fox, says that "(Rowell's) teaching style draws students into her lessons and she encourages them to express their thoughts and opinions. She stretches her students and helps them see the world in an entirely different light."

Rowell works alongside her students in and out of the classroom, working at a local homeless shelter, taking a lobbying trip to the Ohio state capital, and bringing concepts of research methods into class.

Rowell has won numerous awards for teaching excellence, including the 2005 Outstanding Community Colleges Professor of the Year from the Carnegie Foundation and Case Foundation, and the 2005 North Central Sociological Professor of the Year. She has been included in "Who's Who Among America's Teachers" four times (1996, 1997, 2002, and 2004). In 2003, Rowell was one of 15 community college faculty chosen for a Fulbright group study abroad trip to Botswana, Swaziland, and South Africa to develop curriculum for the Midwest Institute for International Education. She served as the president of the North Central Sociological Association (NCSA) with her term ending in March 2010. She has participated in the Integrating Data Analysis Project (IDA) at Institute for Social Research, a part of the University of Michigan.

Rowell earned a bachelor's and master's degrees from Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, and a Ph.D. from Ohio State University.

She "considers it an honor to walk into a classroom and help students critically think about the world they live in."

Better, Not Smaller

A poll from the center-left Center for American Progress (CAP) suggests that while American confidence in government to solve problems is at its lowest for a long time, most still see a large government roll in a wide variety of areas, reports the Washington Post. The Post focuses on the fact that just 33% of Americans have a lot or some confidence in the federal government to solve problems, down 11% from 2005, but notes that confidence in state governments (down 15%) and large corporations (down 18%) has declined by even more, suggesting that economic decline has lead to distrust of all the major forces in American life. The liberal CAP, on the other hand, focused on the fact that while Americans don't trust government they would rather see it work more efficiently than shrink by 62% to 36% (though setting up such a choice could be an attempt by the center-left think-tank to encourage respondents not to call for a reduction in the size of government). CAP and the Post also note that despite general dissatisfaction with government, Americans would like to see more government involvement in exploring alternative energy sources, improving public schools, reducing poverty and making college and health care more affordable.

It's worth noting that this poll was commissioned by a liberal think-tank and executed by a Democratic polling firm. The survey methodology is available in the full report.

Public Opinion in Pakistan

A new poll from the Pew Global Attitudes Project offers depressing news for the West. While favorability ratings for extremist groups remain low (18% for al Qaeda and 15% for the Taliban) they are increasing (up from 9% and 10% respectively last year though down substantially from 2008). Worse, those low ratings remain as high or higher than the ratings for the United States (17%) or confidence in President Obama (8%), a point the Christian Science Monitor noted in their title on the poll (a title which is only true if ignoring the disproportionately urban sample and the 3% margin of error).

More troubling, huge majorities of Pakistanis support workplace segregation of men and women (85%), stoning adulterers (82%) and the execution of coverts away from Islam (76%). Yet positive news remains. Despite distrust of the United States, 64% want improved relations with America. And, despite support for extremist domestic laws, 80% say suicide attacks and attacks on civilians cannot be justified. Furthermore, most view extremism as less of threat than they did last year, likely because of gains made against militants in the Swat Valley.