Since the end of the 1970s, something has gone profoundly wrong in America. Inequality has soared. Educational progress slowed. Incarceration rates quintupled. Family breakdown accelerated. Median household income stagnated.
The bottom quarter of the human population has only three-quarters of one percent of global household income, about one thirty-second of the average income in the world, whereas the people in the top five percent have nine times the average income. So the ratio between the averages in the top five percent and the bottom quarter is somewhere around 300 to one - a huge inequality that also gives you a sense of how easily poverty could be avoided.
People at the very top of the income scale also benefited from globalization and automation. But the income of working- and middle-class people in the developed world has stagnated.
The collective income of all these people - the bottom half - is less than three percent of global household income, and so there is a grotesque maldistribution of income and wealth.
While easy to understand, the income-based poverty line has limitations. Specifically, the median monthly household income measures only income without considering assets.
Over the period from 1988 to 2005, the income share of the top five percent has grown by about 3.5 percent of global household income, and the shares of all the other groups have diminished. The greatest relative reduction was in the bottom quarter, which lost about one third of its share of global household income, declining from 1.155 to 0.775 percent, and now is even more marginalized.
The average household might prepare for root canal, traffic accident, unemployment or illness, but how the household will meet, manage and even survive violent crime is the most neglected area of household management.
After adjusting for inflation, the average income of the top 5% of households grew by 38% from 1989 to 2013. By comparison, the average real income of the other 95% of households grew less than 10%.
After adjusting for inflation, the average income of the top 5% of households grew by 38% from 1989 to 2013. ?By comparison, the average real income of the other 95% of households grew less than 10%.
In New Orleans, where I'm from, the average household income, with two working parents, two kids, a dog and a little fence is $16,000 a year, so $15,000 for a movie sounds pretty good.
To make a proper moral appraisal of the prevalence of severe poverty today, we should focus not on comparisons with times past, when the global average income was much lower, but on a comparison with what would be possible in our time, given the current global average income and level of technological and administrative development.
China's continued growth and rising household income are creating opportunities for lower-income economies in low-cost manufacturing.
For over a decade, the top 1% of income earners have seen their pay skyrocket, riding a wave of lobbyist-sponsored financial de-regulation. For the remaining 99%, wages have stagnated, and employment has fallen off a cliff.
Since 1994, unemployment rates are lower. Median household income is higher. A greater percentage of Americans are graduating from college. Home ownership rates are higher. And the violent crime rate has decreased.
Household spending growth has been particularly solid in 2015, with purchases of new motor vehicles especially strong. Job growth has bolstered household income, and lower energy prices have left consumers with more to spend on other goods and services.
The monetary impacts of malaria from the household to the global level are significant. Malaria tends to strike during harvest season, rendering families too sick and too weak to perform the work necessary to earn a living. Malaria-stricken families spend an average of over a quarter of their income on malaria treatment.