Kruse Kronicle

American Social Indicators, 2007: Getting Better but Feeling Worse

Over the past month, I have done fifteen posts on American social indicators. (See Index) What can we conclude from these indicators? First, we can say that the worst year in American history over the last fifty years was probably about 1981.

• The property crime rate hit its high in 1975, but violent crime was at its worst in 1981. The highest murder rate was in 1980.
• The suicide rate peaked in 1977.
• The abortion rate peaked in 1981.
• The divorce rate peaked in 1981.
• The highest rate for illicit drug use for high school seniors was in 1979, and for illicit drug use excluding marijuana was in 1981.
• The highest rate of cigarette use for high school seniors was in 1975, and for alcohol was in 1978.
• The rate for all (combined) sexually transmitted diseases was highest in 1977.
• The high school dropout rate declined steadily in the years before 1973. It flattened out and peaked in 1979, before continuing the historical pattern of decline.
• Composite SAT scores hit their lowest levels in 1980 and 1981.
• The highest rate of inflation was in 1980.
• The highest rate of poverty was in 1983.
• Unemployment hit its highest rate in 1982.
• Median household inflation-adjusted income was lower in 1981-1983 than in 1972.

Second, over the last twenty-five years, there has been at least modest improvement in all these measures and substantial improvement in several. Additionally, life expectancy continues a 150-year trend of increases, and infant mortality is at all-time lows.

This is not to say that every trend is positive:

• Sexually transmitted diseases have been on the rise in recent years.
• The rate of children born outside of two-parent environments is at historical highs and is slowly growing.
• Education trends, as represented by ACT scores, may be taking a negative turn.
• The status of African Americans as a group relative to Whites has been slowly improving but seemingly at a snail's pace in too many regards. (Approximately two-thirds of African American children are in single-parent homes. The rate among Whites is slowly closing the gap.)
• While the poor have a better quality of life than thirty years, the increase in the rate of child poverty, strongly linked to the increase in one-parent homes, is not a positive development.

Still, the overall picture is remarkably positive.

Third, and most importantly, these indicators tell me that there is a significant disconnect between what is happening and what the general populace perceives is happening. There is a sense of gloom when I talk with people, regardless of political or ideological persuasion. There is a belief that our culture is in decay (although sometimes for opposing reasons depending on ideology.) Some reference the fall of the Roman Empire (due to cultural decay) as a metaphor for our day. Yet as I have shown, a great many of the most significant indicators point towards improving cultural health, not decay. So why do we feel so gloomy?

Some suggest that the War in Iraq and America's response to threats of terrorism have heightened our anxiety. I don't dismiss this altogether, but the sense of gloom precedes the events of 9/11, so I think there must be something deeper.

Some would suggest that major media outlets harp on the negative and the sensational to make money. Consequently, we get an exaggerated and distorted nature of how things are. The increased competition between media has brought this about. I suspect there is some truth in this claim. However, I think at least two other factors are more central.

First, I think there is a combination of rising expectations and the law of diminishing returns. When we begin to make headway on addressing some issues, expectations rise. We believe we should be able to do even more. Often, substantial improvements can easily and quickly be made in addressing almost any social problem, but each succeeding level of improvement tends to get exponentially more difficult and costly while rendering more modest levels of change. Thus, even though great improvement is made over time, a growing sense of frustration develops with the inability to effect improvements in the present. 

Second, probably most significantly, is a cultural divide about what a healthy culture looks like and what creates it. If we polled a broad spectrum of Americans, I don't think there would be much disagreement about my assessment of most of the variables I have reviewed. However, if we polled about what has led to these improvements and what will lead to more improvement, I expect we might find a stark divide.

I expect that there would be one group that would say that the return to traditional family values, economic freedom, law enforcement, and alternatives to public education has led to the turnaround we see in the culture. Another group would say it is the enforcement of constitutional rights (especially for women and minorities), government intervention, freedom from oppressive traditionalism (including religion), and public education that has made the difference. I suspect that these two groups are both minorities, but they are highly agitated and energized minorities. Each group sees the other's vision as an apocalyptic destruction of the gains made and a deterrent to future progress. Both factions are now led by idealistic, militant Baby Boomers who, feeling a creeping sense of their own mortality, are rallying for one last charge to conform the world to their idealistic visions. Because these camps are the energized people in the electorate, these are the people to whom the political parties cater.

Meanwhile, a third group of Americans (probably also a minority) is not swayed by either of the camps and takes a variety of more nuanced perspectives. Yet they feel pessimistic about the future because the rancorous vitriol of the other two groups. In short, there is no consensus about the direction the nation needs to go to move forward.

For those who have read the works of William Strauss and Neil Howe, you will know this is not the first time we have been in this predicament. Our era is very similar to the mood of the late 1930s, the late 1850s (especially with an eerie similarity of having two different kinds of states: slave/free, red/blue), or the 1760s. There is an ebb and flow to cultural consensus, and right now, I suspect we are at low tide. I doubt the tide will be perceptibly rolling in for at least another decade.

Without consensus about direction or cause and effect in cultural change, every move on one or more social indicators only reinforces the templates used by those with the biggest cultural megaphones of our time. While things are getting better, everyone views things as becoming more precarious.

On the other hand, maybe it is just human nature to be pessimistic, to see disaster around every corner. More than 230 years ago, Adam Smith wrote:

"The annual produce of the land and labour of England is certainly much greater than it was, a century ago. Few people doubt this, yet during this period, five years have seldom passed in which some book or pamphlet has not been published pretending to demonstrate that the wealth of the nation was fast declining, that the country was depopulated, agriculture neglected, manufactures decaying, and trade undone. Nor have these publications been all political party pamphlets. Many of them have been written by very candid and very intelligent people, who wrote nothing but what they believed, and for no other reason but because they believed it." (Wealth of Nations. HT: Mark Perry)

These are just some of my thoughts. Thanks for reading along with this series.

[Index]

Environment

SOCIAL INDICATORS 2007

There is a long history of environmentalism in American life. Yellowstone National Park was created in 1872. The Audubon Society, formed in 1905, was one of the earliest environmental groups. President Teddy Roosevelt (1901-1909) was probably the first "environmental president" with his conservationist policies. More modern environmental groups can be traced to events like the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. Conservation was reborn, and concern about environmental issues became increasingly important in assessing the quality of life.

The American experience exemplifies what economist Indur Goklany describes as the Environmental Transition theory. The graph below illustrates what Goklany calls the Environmental Transition curve.

Those familiar with Kuznets Curve will recognize the similarity, except "Time" has replaced per capita income or GDP on the X-Axis. Goklany describes the Environmental Transition hypothesis this way.

"...society is on a continual quest to improve its quality of life, which is determined by numerous social, economic, and environmental factors. The weight given to each  determinant is constantly changing with society's precise circumstances and perceptions. In the early stages of economic and technological development, which go hand-in-hand, society places a higher priority on increasing  affluence than other determinants, even if that means tolerating some environmental deterioration, because increasing wealth provides  the means for obataining basic needs and amenities (e.g., food, shelter, water, and electricity) and reducing the most significant risks to public health and safety (e.g. malnutrition, infectious and parasitic diseases, and child mortality). Also, in those early stages, society may, in fact, be unaware of the risk imposed by a deterioration in the specific environmental impact, measured by the particular indicator in question. However, as society becomes wealthier; tackles these problems; and, possibly, gains more knowledge about the soical, health, and economic consequences of the environmental impact in question, reducing  the environmental impact due to the specific indicator automatically rises higher on its priority list (even if the impact does not worsen). But because the first increments of economic activity further increase environmental impact, it becomes an even more important determinant of the overall quality of life. Accordingly, lowering the specific impact becomes even more urgent. (Goklany, 106-107)

The Kuznets Curve uses only affluence on the X-axis. Goklany points to the need for sufficient time for the technology generated by rising affluence to emerge and be deployed. Consequently, technological innovation may vary depending on a nation's particular set of issues. Furthermore, critical to the performance of the Environmental Transition Curve are democracy, property rights, and rule of law. Individuals must have just social institutions by which they can make their growing concerns felt. Russia and former Soviet Bloc nations had increasing per capita income but horrendous pollution levels. Some Latin American countries, where aid and trade tend to impact only the top minority of society due to corruption and inadequate government, have similar problems.

The United States appears to have hit the apex of the Environmental Transition Curve in the 1950s and 1960s. As the below chart from the EPA shows, despite significant societal growth in a variety of measures, levels of pollution have continued to decline.

 

Emissions of the six principal pollutants dropped 54% between 1970 and 2006, despite the growth levels indicated in the chart. We have much room for improvement but are trending in the right direction.

But it isn't only in matters of pollution that we have seen protection of the environment. Affluence and technology have led to considerable conservation of land and natural habitats. Consider the progression of the variables in the chart below from 1910 to the present:

Or presented in tabular format:

Had we not experienced the scientific and technological advances we experienced over the past century (and the economic growth and affluence that made those advances possible), a land area equivalent to the area east of the Mississippi would have been needed for additional crop production. Instead, after rising to an all-time high of 387 million acres in 1949, the amount of cropland has dropped to the identical acreage of 1910 while feeding three times as many people and creating an abundant excess that is shipped worldwide. The World Conservation Union estimates that habitat loss, of which agriculture is the biggest contributor, affects 85-90% of bird, mammal, and amphibian species. (Goklany 117-118) Affluence and technology have made a significant contribution to conservation. Thankfully, the rate of global cropland expansion, which has been growing to keep pace with the population explosion over the past two centuries, began to slow in the 1960s and has nearly leveled out. Technologies and techniques learned in affluent Western societies now have a conserving impact elsewhere. We see similar patterns in water purity and forestation (there are more trees in the USA today than in 1900.)

This is not to say that there are no challenges. Carbon dioxide emissions are a new topic on the horizon. As with most environmental issues in the past, a potential threat emerges, and consequences have to be sifted through a messy political process. The US did not sign the Kyoto Accord in 1997 (and correctly, so I believe), and US CO2 has continued to increase. However, US CO2 emissions per capita dropped by .7% between 1997-2004 (Poland, Germany, and Brazil were the only other major nations with declines), and CO2 per dollar of GDP dropped by 6.1% (Poland, Russia, and Ukraine all had declined due to contracting economies and the United Kingdom and Germany also faired slightly better than the US.) Per capita declines precede absolute declines as society transitions.

Meanwhile, megawatts generated by hydroelectric, solar, and wind technologies are growing exponentially (Garte, 74-76). After more than thirty years with no new nuclear power plants in the US, there are applications for seven locations in 2007, and eleven more applications are expected in 2008. As developed nations move further down the back slope of the environmental transition curve, more technologies can be diffused to other developing nations, thus reducing both the height and the length of their environmental transition curves.

Finally, while this series is about American social indicators, we must say a word about raw materials. There is considerable angst that we are depleting natural resources. I have addressed this more in-depth elsewhere, but we need to reiterate that nothing could be farther from the truth. Commodities markets factor present and future supply and demand into prices. If we were running out, then prices would be slowly climbing. Instead, as a recent study shows, commodity prices have been declining at an annual rate of about 1.3% for the past 140 years, and there is no end in sight. Goklany notes that "…in 2005, the price of copper was 1/80th of its 1800 level, aluminum dropped to a 1/40th of its 1900 price, silver declined to a 1/40th of its 1860 level, and tin to a 1/7th of its price in 1880. (99-100) With affluence and technology comes ever more efficient extraction, use and reclamation of raw materials. Now we are seeing growth in the use of renewable materials as well.

Conclusions

Wealth and affluence have moved us over the environmental transition curve. As environmentally conscious citizens and economic interests press their concerns, we have seen an ever cleaner and healthier environment, and trends indicate more of the same in the foreseeable future. The learning curve for developing nations should be less steep and of shorter duration, provided sufficient political freedoms are in place for people to impact their societies. This is not to say that there are no challenges ahead, but the overall quality of life related to the environment has significantly improved.

(Seymour Garte. Where We Stand: A Surprsing Look at the Real State of our Planet. New York: AMACOM, 2008.)

(Indur Goklany. The Improving State of the World: Why we're living longer, healthier, more comfortable lives on a cleaner planet. Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2007.)

[Index]

Ethnicity

SOCIAL INDICATORS 2007

I've avoided giving an extensive analysis of subgroups within American culture during this series on social indicators. I've been focused on trends at the aggregate level. However, one measure of the quality of life for the whole society is the degree to which each person has an opportunity for a quality of life similar to other groups within the culture. Because of their unique place in American history, African Americans have been subjected to the greatest oppression of any ethnic group within our culture. Their status with regard to the privileged status of white Americans can serve as a measure of how well we are doing in achieving equal opportunity for a high quality of life.

The first social indicators I mentioned in this series were life expectancy and the infant mortality rate. These rates are two of the best indicators for overall quality of life. Life Expectancy tells about the chances of living a long life. The infant mortality rate (number of deaths before age 1 per 1,000 births) tells about the most vulnerable among us and how well our cultural infrastructure meets their needs.

So how are African-Americans fairing compared to white Americans?

Life expectancy for African Americans as a percentage of life expectancy for white Americans increased for several years up to the mid-1980s. It appeared to be on a trajectory to equal that of White Americans by early this century. However, the rate took a noticeable dive in the late 1980s and stayed flat for the first years of the 1990s. Since then, the gap has been closing again at a rate similar to before 1984.

What happened? I suspect that rate declined due to the devastating crack cocaine epidemic that hit many black communities in the late 1980s. Murder rates and drug-related deaths soared for young African Americans. (See Crime (Part 1) ) It may not be the only cause, but I suspect it was a strong contributor.

The African American infant mortality rate declined from 32.6 in 1970 to 13.7 in 2005. However, the rate for white Americans declined even more precipitously. The rate of infant deaths for African Americans compared to white Americans was less than 2 to 1 in 1970, but by 2001 the rate was 2.5 to 1. There are likely several reasons for this, including a disparity in healthcare quality. The disparity seems to have leveled out in 1992 and has varied within a narrow range ever since. This trend also correlates well with the increasing ratio of African American single women having children (approximately 70% of all African American births) versus white single women having children over the same period.

Another important indicator of equality is the degree of poverty. How have African Americans faired compared to white Americans?

Some estimates place African American poverty rates above 80% before World War II. By 1975, the rate had dropped to 31.3%. The ratio of the African American rate to the rate for White Americans was 3.5 to 1 in 1975. Except for the minor setback in the 1980s (drug epidemic?), the ratio has slowly declined to a rate of less than 2.5 to 1.

Directly tied to economic viability is education.

The rate of high school graduation is approaching the rate for white Americans. The rate of college completion is also improving at a slower rate. It was just under 40% of the rate for White Americans in 1966 and is now over 60% of that rate. As education is one of the most important components of economic advancement, this gives some hope for gains in quality of life for African Americans in the future.

Possibly the most disturbing of all statistics is the ratio of black men ages 18-24 in college versus being in prison. For White males aged 18-24, there are 28 men in college for every 1 in prison. For African American men ages 18-24, the ratio is 2.6 to 1. (See More Brothers in Prison Than In College?) I don't know how this compares historically, but it indicates that we have a long road to equality.

Conclusions

When we look at group measures over time, there has been significant improvement in the absolute quality of life for African Americans. However, when we look at the quality of life relative to White Americans, we get a mixed picture of modest improvement. The quality of life for African Americans relative to White Americans is improving but disappointingly slowly.

[Index]

Economic Status (Part 4)

SOCIAL INDICATORS 2007

Poverty Trends

We now shift back to the income measures of economic status and the most frequently referenced indicator with regard to economic health: The poverty rate. Here is the percentage of persons living below the poverty level.

The poverty rate for families dropped by half between 1960 (22.2%) and 1973 (11.1%). It stayed below the 12% level until 1980. From then until the early 1990s, the rate remained mainly in the 13-15% range. The rate has stayed in the 11-13% range since then.

Remembering that the poverty rate is a snapshot of society at a given time is critical. Many people listed in the poverty statistics are in temporary circumstances. Periodically, studies have measured poverty over several months. For instance, one study done over 48 months in 1996 to 1998 discovered that of those who were counted in poverty statistics during that timeframe, "...51% were in poverty for two to four months; 5.7% of those who experienced poverty were in poverty more than thirty-six months." (1) As noted in the previous post, people in the lowest quintile of society experienced on average a 90% increase in inflation-adjusted income from 1996-2005. The number of people living in chronic poverty is only a few percent.

An important development in the poverty rate is the increasingly "younger face" poverty has. It was common to think of older Americans a generation ago when one thought of poverty. About 35% of seniors were in poverty in 1960. That number dropped to less than 15% in 1974. The rate for seniors dropped below the overall rate in 1982. Since then it has continued on a steady decline, with minor fluctuations, to a rate of 10.1% in 2004.

The rate for children declined from 26.9 in 1960 to 14.0 in 1969. The rate climbed slightly over the next decade but climbed steeply to 22% in 1983. It stayed at or above 20% for the next ten years. After 1993, the child poverty rate declined to a level in the mid-teens, but it has risen in the past couple of years to 17.8%. The child poverty rate is almost 150% of the overall rate. What is the reason for the increase in child poverty?

The answer to that question becomes apparent when we begin to look at changes in household configurations. The chart below compares four types of households: Male headed households, female-headed households, independent males, and independent females. Independent households are adults living alone or with others to whom they are not related. (Male-headed households include families without a mother. I could not devise a way to disaggregate this information from the data I used, but they are a relatively small percentage of the total.) I compared 1974 poverty data to 2005 data.

Looking at the poverty rate by household arrangement, we see that some significant headway has been made against poverty, particularly in the traditional husband-and-wife household arrangement. But how could the poverty rate decline for each type of household, and yet the overall rate went up? The answer is quite simple. The percentage of people living in various household arrangements has changed.

If the same percentage of people lived in each household arrangement as in 1974, the present poverty rate would be 8.9%! People have shifted into household arrangements with higher levels of poverty. This shift also explains why poverty among seniors is very low, but poverty among children has slowly increased in recent years. An increasing number of children are being reared in single-parent homes, and these homes are more susceptible to poverty. Social scientists have been telling us for many years now: The two most important things you can do to avoid poverty are to live in a household with a husband and wife and have at least a high school education. We have been making progress on the education front, but as we saw in the family formation post, the number of children living in two-parent homes has declined from 85.4% to 67.4% between 1967 and 2006. There are complex dynamics involved, but divorce and the increasing number of children born to single mothers appear to be major inhibitors toward making progress against poverty.

Conclusions:

• Unemployment and inflation rates are just barely above thirty-year lows.
• Income disparity, as measured by the GINI Index, has been rising since the late 1960s, but household configuration changes may be exaggerated per capita.
• Median household income has grown 30% since 1967 in inflation-adjusted dollars.
• Tracking income of specific individuals from 1968 to the present shows a 52% increase in inflation-adjusted income for top quintile families and 18% for bottom quintile families. (However, if family size and non-cash transfers to the poor were factored into the calculation, the difference would narrow considerably.)
• From 1996-2005, 58% of bottom quintile earners moved one quintile or more, while 57.4% of the top 1% dropped one quintile or more, illustrating high economic mobility.
• Consumption levels of individuals in the wealthiest quintile are only about twice as much as the poorest quintile. The middle quintile consumes only 29% more than the lowest. When it comes to basic amenities of life, only a small few are without.
• Since the mid-1990s, the poverty rate has fluctuated in the 11.5-13.5% range. Just slightly above the historic lows of the early 1970s.
• The percentage of seniors living in poverty has dropped below 10%, but poverty for children is nearly 18%.
• Transitioning away from two-parent homes is a major obstacle in addressing poverty, especially child poverty.

The economic indicators suggest an overall improvement in quality of life where most folks have the basic amenities of life, significant economic mobility, and improved economic status throughout their lives. The overall economic picture is one of improvement, though it may be less than we might wish.

1. David Schmidtz. Elements of Justice. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 132.

[Index]

Economic Status (Part 3)

SOCIAL INDICATORS 2007

Consumption Analysis

So far, I’ve been looking at economic status from an income standpoint. Many economists and social scientists have long had misgivings about accessing poverty in this way. First, poverty statistics do a poor job of reflecting actual income. Non-cash assistance like food stamps or housing subsidies is not reflected. Earned Income Credit transfers are as much as $4,400 into poverty households, raising millions above the poverty line, but EIC is not reflected in poverty statistics. Second, not everyone with low income in a given year is impoverished. Some retirees are drawing on savings without substantial income. A reasonably wealthy person unemployed for a few months may make the poverty ranks but still live comfortably by drawing on savings. Meanwhile, a person with a modest income may spike into the top echelons of the income brackets any given year with an inheritance or capital gains windfall. Informal contributions, personal loans, gifts, or cost-sharing efforts are not included, yet studies indicate this is a significant factor in low-income households. (*)

Consumption appears to be a more accurate reflection of actual living standards. Two economists from the Federal Reserve Bank recently published a report about consumption by quintiles, summarized in the New York Times. What follows is largely a review of their findings.

The article reports that:

The top fifth of American households earned an average of $149,963 a year in 2006. As shown in the first accompanying chart, they spent $69,863 on food, clothing, shelter, utilities, transportation, health care and other categories of consumption. The rest of their income went largely to taxes and savings.

The bottom fifth earned just $9,974, but spent nearly twice that — an average of $18,153 a year. How is that possible? A look at the far right-hand column of the consumption chart, labeled “financial flows,” shows why: those lower-income families have access to various sources of spending money that doesn’t fall under taxable income. These sources include portions of sales of property like homes and cars and securities that are not subject to capital gains taxes, insurance policies redeemed, or the drawing down of bank accounts. While some of these families are mired in poverty, many (the exact proportion is unclear) are headed by retirees and those temporarily between jobs, and thus their low income total doesn’t accurately reflect their long-term financial status.

This means there was a 15 to 1 ratio of wealthiest to poorest in income but only a 4 to 1 gap in consumption. The gap between middle and poor households was 4 to 1 and 2 to 1, respectively. But even this still overstates the case.

Let’s take the adjustments one step further. Richer households are larger — an average of 3.1 people in the top fifth, compared with 2.5 people in the middle fifth and 1.7 in the bottom fifth. If we look at consumption per person, the difference between the richest and poorest households falls to just 2.1 to 1. The average person in the middle fifth consumes just 29 percent more than someone living in a bottom-fifth household.

The following chart breaks down the consumption patterns comparing the top, middle, and bottom quintiles:

The Times article goes on to illustrate how the quality of living has changed for the poor and why consumption is a superior measure.

To understand why consumption is a better guideline of economic prosperity than income, it helps to consider how our lives have changed. Nearly all American families now have refrigerators, stoves, color TVs, telephones and radios. Air-conditioners, cars, VCRs or DVD players, microwave ovens, washing machines, clothes dryers and cellphones have reached more than 80 percent of households.

As the second chart, on the spread of consumption, shows, this wasn’t always so. The conveniences we take for granted today usually began as niche products only a few wealthy families could afford. In time, ownership spread through the levels of income distribution as rising wages and falling prices made them affordable in the currency that matters most — the amount of time one had to put in at work to gain the necessary purchasing power.

At the average wage, a VCR fell from 365 hours in 1972 to a mere two hours today. A cellphone dropped from 456 hours in 1984 to four hours. A personal computer, jazzed up with thousands of times the computing power of the 1984 I.B.M., declined from 435 hours to 25 hours. Even cars are taking a smaller toll on our bank accounts: in the past decade, the work-time price of a mid-size Ford sedan declined by 6 percent.

The “second chart” the article refers to is the informative one below.

The Wirtz article reports:

Rising consumption is also apparent in the material possessions of low-income households. A 2005 report by the Census showed that among households ranked in the bottom 10 percent by expenditure, the percentage with microwaves almost doubled to 77 percent from 1992 to 2002; washers went up from 45 to 54 percent; dryers from 30 to 47 percent; computers from 4 to 21 percent; and videocassette recorders up to 56 percent. As of 2002, 92 percent had color televisions, and the average household in the bottom decile owned 1.3 of them. Other reports universally show the same consumption trend: Poor households own more stuff and utilize more services than ever before. (*)

In the previous post, we saw considerable fluidity up and down the economic scale. Consumption analysis tells us that very few people are in chronic deprivation. When it comes to the basic amenities of everyday life, there is far more similarity than might first seem on a per-person basis. The absolute living standard of those at the bottom of the economic ladder has improved significantly in recent decades. Or, referring to my previous analogy, while a wider distance may have opened up between the ceiling and the floor of the economic house, the floor has risen considerably.

Finally, we must look at the changing face of poverty and what contributes to the change.

(*) Ronald A. Wirtz. Poor by what standard? Fedgazette. Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. November 2006.

[Index]

Economic Status (Part 2)

SOCIAL INDICATORS 2007

Economic Mobility

Most societies, through the ages, have had flat income distributions. The overwhelming majority of people lived near subsistence levels, with a tiny minority living in splendor. There was equal distribution but little opportunity for an individual to improve economic status. Since the Industrial Revolution, we have seen a great expansion in the distance between the top and bottom of the income distribution, forming a bell-shaped curve where most of the population is clustered halfway between the top and bottom. But contrary to the historical norm, there is an extreme fluidity to the people moving back and forth across the distribution over their lifetimes.

Thus, the two options have been:

A. (Historic) Fairly equal distribution of income with most people living near subsistence levels and with little hope of significant improvement in their lives.

B. (Market Economy) An uneven distribution of income with most people living well above subsistence levels but with considerable opportunity or risk of moving up or down in economic status.

The trade-off has been reduced economic stability (but equal distribution) for more opportunity and risk (but unequal distribution with most people living well above subsistence.) If an economic system is a house where the wealthiest are the ceiling and the poorest are the floor, then the market economy is less concerned with the ceiling height or the distance between the floor and the ceiling. The market economy is concerned with how high the floor is and how many people have the opportunity to rise off the floor. To what degree does this mobility exist within the American economic system?

Median Income

Growth in median household income is a frequently used barometer for how people are doing economically over time. The "median" is the amount the household earns on a continuum halfway between the household making the most and the household making the least. The idea is that some people will do well in the economy while others will not do so well, but overall economic status should be rising:

Median household income has risen steadily over the last thirty-seven years, increasing by almost 30% in constant dollars (2006 dollars.) Minor dips in the growth are all directly linked to recessions starting in 1969, 1973, 1980, 1981, 1990, and 2001. What is noteworthy is the steady growth.

However, as noted yesterday, household size has shrunk by nearly 20% over the last forty years. That means the constant dollar income is being spread across more households than would have been the case in 1967. Each household has fewer people making a demand on the household income. Furthermore, these income calculations do not include non-cash benefits like healthcare, which have become a sizable portion of work compensation and social welfare assistance in recent years. Therefore, improvement on an individual basis is probably understated.

Income Change for Specific People

Quintile analysis is another way of looking at economic distribution questions. Typically, people look at the median income for, say, the lowest quintile and measure changes from date A to date B. This doesn't tell us anything about whether income is improving over the lifetimes of particular people. (This is true of aggregate median income as well.) No change from A to B would only tell us that there is no change for people at the starting wage in society, not that people will be stuck at their wage for forty years. We need to see how specific people fare over time.

The chart below comes from a report called Economic Mobility of Families Across Generations published by the Economic Mobility Project, an Institute of the Pew Charitable Trusts. The Pew study was based on a sample of 2,367 individuals between 0 and 18 in 1968 who were tracked into adulthood.

There are many nuances to this forty-year study. Two-thirds of the children had higher incomes than their parents, and one-third were lower. About 80% of those in the lowest quintile made more than their parents. The income for men in their thirties has stagnated over this period but has been increasing for women. Part of the reason for our improving economic standard is that there are more working couples and shrinking household sizes. The average family size decreased from 3.58. to 3.13 from 1970-2006, and the average household size shrank from 3.14 to 2.57, according to the Census Bureau. It also needs to be acknowledged that while, by definition, each quintile represents 20% of households, the bottom quintile represents only 14.8% of the population, while the top quintile represents 24.3%. The bottom quintile had an average of 1.9 people with .6 workers, while the top quintile had 3.1 persons with 2.1 workers. (1) Divorce and the increasing rate of single moms with no father present are major factors here.

Making analysis even more difficult are comparisons of what income buys. The typical house is now 2.5 times larger than forty years ago, plus technologies like computers, cable television, and cell phones, which did not exist forty years ago, are an expected part of family life. Many goods have become much cheaper in real dollars, which is every bit as much an increase in economic status as is increased wages. Yet there has been an escalation of what goods one needs to own to feel "normal" in society.

Another study by the Treasury Department, reported in the Wall Street Journal, gives us further insight.

The Treasury study examined a huge sample of 96,700 income tax returns from 1996 and 2005 for Americans over the age of 25. The study tracks what happened to these tax filers over this 10-year period. One of the notable, and reassuring, findings is that nearly 58% of filers who were in the poorest income group in 1996 had moved into a higher income category by 2005. Nearly 25% jumped into the middle or upper-middle income groups, and 5.3% made it all the way to the highest quintile.

Of those in the second lowest income quintile, nearly 50% moved into the middle quintile or higher, and only 17% moved down. This is a stunning show of upward mobility, meaning that more than half of all lower-income Americans in 1996 had moved up the income scale in only 10 years.

Also encouraging is the fact that the after-inflation median income of all tax filers increased by an impressive 24% over the same period. ...

... The Treasury study found that those tax filers who were in the poorest income quintile in 1996 saw a near doubling of their incomes (90.5%) over the subsequent decade. Those in the highest quintile, on the other hand, saw only modest income gains (10%). ...

Only one income group experienced an absolute decline in real income--the richest 1% in 1996. Those households lost 25.8% of their income. Moreover, more than half (57.4%) of the richest 1% in 1996 had dropped to a lower income group by 2005. Some of these people might have been "rich" merely for one year, or perhaps for several, as they hit their peak earning years or had some capital gains windfall. Others may simply have not been able to keep up with new entrepreneurs and wealth creators. ...

The study is also valuable because it shows that income mobility remains little changed from what similar studies found in the 1970s and 1980s. Some journalists and academics have cited selective evidence to claim that income mobility has declined in recent years.

But the 58% of lowest-income earners who moved to a higher income quintile in this study is roughly comparable to the percentages that did so in several similar studies going back to the late 1960s. "The basic finding of this analysis," says the Treasury report, "is that relative income mobility is approximately the same in the last 10 years as it was in the previous decade."

The idea of a cadre of wealthy people forty years ago expanding their wealth at the expense of others is false. The more accurate picture, referring back to the house analogy, is of a rising floor with an even faster rising ceiling and highly fluid movement of a great many people up and down between the two. This is the compensation for a growing GINI Index (see previous post) and greater variance in income levels.

At the beginning of the previous post, I said that most people think of economic status in terms of income and wealth. But there is yet a third way we can think about economic status. Many economists suggest we are much better served by looking at consumption patterns instead of income patterns. What can we learn from consumption patterns?

1. David Schmidtz. Elements of Justice. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 128.

[Index]

 

Economic Status (Part 1)

SOCIAL INDICATORS 2007

Economic status is usually cast in terms of income and wealth. When we talk about economic justice, we typically have one of two things in mind. First, we are asking if people have sufficient resources. Second, we are asking how income and wealth are distributed throughout society. Two critical factors in these matters are employment and inflation.

Employment and Inflation

Whether self-employed or employed by others, employment is a fundamental necessity for economic survival for all but a few. Low unemployment is a sign of economic health. The question is, how low should unemployment be? Full employment is not possible because, at any given moment, people are leaving jobs in search of new ones while others are entering employment for the first time. Then there are those who are chronically unemployed. If the employment rate gets too high, a labor shortage ensues, and employers begin offering higher wages to attract qualified workers. Businesses raise prices to compensate for the increased wages. The workers must pay higher prices for goods and services, so they seek even higher wages, thus creating a cycle of inflation. As long as consumer confidence remains high about the future, the cycle continues upward.

As wages escalate, businesses begin to automate and find labor-saving options to avoid more hiring and paying increasing wages. This eventually reduces jobs, and labor becomes cheaper because more laborers are looking for work. Consumers become more anxious about spending, and businesses lose revenue. They cut more workers. Some businesses close or scale back, which means less competition for the remaining businesses. It soon reaches a point where employers hire workers again because their wages are relatively cheaper, and the employers believe they can expand sales again. The upward spiral begins again. Other complexities are involved, but this interaction of inflation and unemployment is at the core of the business cycle.

What have been the recent trends with unemployment and inflation?

 

The Unemployment and inflation rates have been decreasing since the early 1980s. Unemployment was 4.6% at the end of 2006. Some economic experts believe that 5% unemployment is optimal, striking a balance between overheating the job market and leaving too many people without work. Inflation has hovered around a modest 3% over the past decade. Recent decades have been very stable.

Income Distribution

The Gini Index is a measure of income inequality. The Index ranks income distributions from 0 to 1, where 0 equals equality, and 1 equals inequality. Gini indexes had been calculated for families from 1947 until recently in the US. However, household income is now the preferred indicator, and that data is available only from 1967 to present.

The Gini Index declined slowly over the 1950s and 1960s until it reached .388 in 1968. Based on earlier data for the entire century, I suspect 1968 was the low point of the century. Over the past four decades, the rate has climbed to .470 in 2006. That is an increase of 20% (although the numbers are not considered comparable after 1993.). Many attribute the rising inequality to the tax cuts implemented by Ronald Reagan in 1981. However, the rise in the Gini index began earlier:

Some estimates suggest the poverty rate in the United States in 1939 was more than 40%. This would certainly have given a high Gini Index. We also know that the Gini Index fell steadily from World War II's end until 1968. The Gini index fluctuated near the 1968 level until 1974. The rate began to grow in 1975 and continued steadily until early 1992, set back only by the 1980 and 1990 recessions. If not for the recession and economic woes of the mid-1970s, the origin of the increase might have been as far back as 1968. The calculation methods for the Gini Index were revised in 1993, and indexes after that date are not strictly comparable with previous years. Since 1993 the annual growth rate has been similar to the growth rate before the Reagan-Bush years.

So why did the Gini Index contract and then grow? Frankly, I don't think anyone knows with certainty. It appears that changes in taxation were not a primary factor.

• After the 1964 Kennedy tax cut, inequality continued to decline for the next four years before leveling off in the following years.
• Ronald Regan cut taxes in 1981, and the inequality kept increasing through the 1980s at or above the same rate it started in 1975.
• Bill Clinton raised taxes, and inequality kept growing, although at a slower rate.
• George W. Bush cut taxes, and inequality grew slightly more than under Clinton.

There is no doubt that taxation impacts distributive inequality, but it is also clear that many other factors are involved. There is also a possibility that some of the increase is misleading due to changes in the size of American households.

The average number of persons per household shrank from 3.14 to 2.57 from 1970-2006. (Census Bureau) Why is this important? Imagine a home with two working parents making a combined income of $100,000. Their daughter gets her first job after college, making $30,000 a year, and moves out of the house, thus creating a new household. Family income has increased by 30% to $130,000. However, this income is now spread across two households for an average household income of $65,000. That is a 35% decrease in household income. There has been a growing trend of single adults living independently. Similarly, take a poverty-level single-mother home where a 19-year-old daughter becomes a single mom. She moves out of her mother's household to form her own household to take advantage of government benefits. The number of households over which income is spread expands once again.

All this is to say the measuring distribution is not as straightforward as it may seem. However, we must also ask what importance should be given to income distribution over other factors. Distribution cannot be examined apart from the question of economic mobility.

[Index]

Education

SOCIAL INDICATORS 2007

Education is critical for societies with complex modern economic systems. However, measuring the quality of education over time is difficult. As the economy and society become more complex, so do the educational needs. As the rate of technology change increases, some jobs disappear, and others are created. Workers have to be more adaptable than ever before and must be continually learning if they are to keep up with a rapidly changing job market.

Here is some of what we know about education in America:

Only 48% of adults age 25 and older had a high school education in 1964. By 2006, the number rose to 85.9%. The population completing college tripled from 9% to 28.8% over the same timeframe. So how do the most recent graduates compare to students in previous years?

College Board has adjusted the above statistics to compensate for changes made to the SAT in the 1990s. These statistics show the highest composite score (mean of the verbal and math scores) was 529.5 in 1967 and 1968. The composite score declined significantly over the next decade and bottomed out in 1980 and 1981 at 497. That score has risen steadily to 514 in 2005, the highest rate since 1974.

The math score has increased from an all-time low of 492 in 1981 to 520 in 2005. The math scores for 2003-2006 were higher than the previous high of 517 in 1969. However, the 2007 score dropped three points from 518 to 515, the largest one-year drop since 1973.

After an initial rise from the 1981 low of 502, the verbal score declined again to a new all-time low of 499 in 1991 and 1994. It improved over the next decade to 508 in 2005. The College Board changed the "verbal" portion to a "reading" portion and a"writing" portion in 2006. (The "reading" portion is represented here as continuous with the "verbal" portion.) The reading and writing portions were 503 and 497 in 2006 and 502 and 494 in 2007. Some speculate that the verbal scores have been depressed by an increasing number of people taking the test who did not have English as their first language, namely immigrants and non-USA students.

These statistics suggest a significant increase in the proportion of people receiving a diploma and that the quality of education for college-bound students is improving (at least until the past two years.). Still, quality of education is a relative standard. Forty years ago, more than sixty percent of jobs were considered unskilled labor. That percentage has dropped by more than half since that time. More and more jobs require greater technical skills. The economy increasingly demands that workers be involved in continual education throughout their careers. There is also an increasing demand for people with aptitudes for science and technology. Yet nearly a third of high school graduates can not read at a level beyond the most basic level needed to function in society. Are we effectively equipping students with the skills they will need?

Of the four major areas measured in NEAP tests, only mathematics showed improvement for the oldest children over the past two or three decades. Reading has remained at the same level while writing and science have declined. For the youngest children, there is an improvement in mathematics and science scores but no change in the reading and writing scores. It remains to be seen if these improvements will continue with younger children in their academic lives, but it is a good start. (The next NEAP test is scheduled for 2008. )

Conclusions:

There is clearly room for improvement within our educational institutions. The rate of people earning high school, college, and advanced diplomas is the highest it has ever been. SAT scores suggest that there has been improvement in the preparation of college-bound high school students over the past twenty years, but the past two years of data may indicate a reversal. The NEAP scores suggest there has been little improvement in the quality of education across the whole spectrum of high school students. These indicators suggest a quality of life that is only modestly improving.

[Index]

Family Formation and Sexuality (Part 2)

SOCIAL INDICATORS 2007

Despite the decrease in teenage sexual behavior and less unprotected sexual behavior, there is a rapid increase in the rate of sexually transmitted diseases:

The first graph shows that the rate of sexually transmitted diseases more than doubled between the early 1960s and early 1970s. After hitting a high in 1991, the rate dropped again until 1997. Since then, the rate has risen steadily and is now at its highest level, just above 600. That has been driven by a 69.2% increase in the rate of Chlamydia. The CDC estimates that one in five adolescent and adult Americans has genital herpes. The second graph shows a similar story for these other diseases and conditions, although the rate has remained fairly constant over the last decade.

The rate of people contracting Aids, the most deadly of sexually transmitted diseases, is also not good:

After peaking in 1992, the rate of new Aids declined almost by half between 1992 and 1997. However, the rate has flattened out since that time until 2004. Then, in 2005, there was an 11.6% increase in new cases. It remains to be seen if this marks a new trend.

All of these statistics point to significant changes in family and sexuality. The recent debate of same-sex unions shows that the very ideas of marriage and family are in flux. If we accept the premise that the two-parent household is the optimal circumstance for raising children and marriage the optimal circumstance for engaging in sexual behavior, then the picture is not good.

While the abortion rate has declined by about 20% over the last twenty years, it is still true that one in four pregnancies ends in abortion. If trends continue, 40% of children will be born to unmarried women by the decade's end. Some of these women, no doubt, go on to marry or live in stable relationships with fathers, but many children born into two-parent families also experience divorce and loss of the two-parent status. (I want to be clear here that I am not saying that any particular one-parent home is hopeless. I am addressing public policy and what we know from looking at the aggregate.) While there is some modest good news about teen sexual behavior, the overall increase in sexually transmitted diseases is very high and rising.

Another cultural factor related to this is the rise in the availability of pornography. The pornography industry was in retreat as recently as the early 1990s, but the rise of the internet has brought it roaring back to life. It is easily a multi-billion dollar industry in the United States. Images and video graphically portraying virtually every imaginable sexual act can be accessed with a few mouse clicks by children with unfiltered internet access. Even with filtered access, children can be confronted with pornography. Chat rooms provide ready-made connections with children for sexual predators. All this is not to mention the potential desensitizing impact of pornography on significant numbers of adults in our culture. The pornography industry has surged in the last few years, and it remains to be seen what impact pornography will have.

Conclusions

• Two-parent families have declined from 87.7% in 1960 to about 67% over the last decade.
• The divorce rate has remained constant at 50% since 1977.
• The percentage of births to unwed mothers has increased from 10% in 1970 to 36.9% in 2005.
• The percentage of births to unwed teens, after rising from 5.4% in 1970 to 9.9% in 1994, has declined to 8.5% in 2005 (but has risen from 8.2% in 1982).
• After reaching an abortion rate high of 29.3 per 1000 women in 1980 and 1981, the rate dropped to 20.8 in 2002.
• The percentage of unmarried nineteen-year-olds who reported that they have ever had sexual intercourse in 1988 and 2002, dropped from 76.5 to 70.1 for girls and from 78% to 65.2% for boys. For seventeen-year-olds, the percentage rose from 38.3% to 43.1% for girls and declined from 57.2% to 39.4%.
• The four major sexually transmitted diseases are at an all-time high. About 1 in 5 Americans has genital herpes.
• New incidences of AIDS reached a high in 1992 of 31.2 new cases per 100,000 population before dropping by half to 16 in 1997. Since then, the rate had bottomed at 13.8 and stayed at about 14 until 2005, when it jumped from 14 to 15.5.
• Pornography has become a multi-billion dollar industry in less than a decade through internet marketing, creating anonymity and low cost for a rapidly growing base of consumers.

Most indicators related to family formation and sexuality suggest a significantly declining quality of life.

[Index]

Family Formation and Sexuality (Part 1)

SOCIAL INDICATORS 2007

The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Act was passed by Congress in 1996. Two of the Act's goals were to reduce out-of-wedlock births and to encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent families. Scholars and politicians generally agree that the most desirable form of family for the nurture of children is a household where both the mother and father are present. Therefore, one measure of societal decline would seem to be a decrease in children born into and raised in two-parent families.

The percentage of families with both parents present declined from 87.7% in 1960 to 85% in 1970. Except for a brief plateau in the late 1980s, the percentage steadily declined to 69.2% in 1993. From 1993 until 2003, the percentage stayed between 68% and the 1993 level. Over the last three years, it has fallen to 67.4%. In 1968, 10.7% of children lived only with their mother, 1.1% with their father, 2.4% with other relatives, and .4% with no relative. By 2006, those percentages were 23.3% with their mother, 4.7% with their father, and 4.6% with neither parent. Government policy appears to be moving even more toward advancing two-parent families, but it remains to be seen if societal values will move toward two-parent homes.

The divorce rate plays a role in the rate of families without two parents.

 

 

The rate of divorces to marriages was about 25-27% from 1950-1967. That rate doubled to more than 50% ten years later, in 1977. The sharp increase was due largely to the rise of "no-fault divorce." Since that time, it has remained remarkably constant at about 50%. Divorce may have impacted the initial rise in one-parent households, but it does not explain everything.

 

Approximately 10% of all births were to unwed mothers in 1970. That ratio has been about 1 in 3 for the last ten years and is still rising. The percentage of all births to teenagers was 5.4% in 1970. That grew to 9.9% in 1994. A slight decline began in 1999; by 2005, it was 8.5%, which is .3% more than in 2003. The more significant trend is the percentage of births to unwed mothers twenty years old or older. The rate was 5.3% in 1970, but by 2005, that rate had increased fivefold to 28.4%. It had increased by 0.5-1.0 percentage points a year since 1999 when it was 23.3%. The behavior of White women drives this increase.

Abortion also has a direct impact on all of these statistics:

Approximately 80% of abortions are to unmarried women. Had those pregnancies come to full term, unmarried women would have given birth to 45% of all births in 2002. That rate has been stable for almost a decade.

These statistics all suggest more sexual activity outside the marriage relationship. Finding reliable time series data on sexual activity is difficult. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) has been doing ongoing research on teenagers and has learned the following:

It has hard to know how these numbers compare to earlier eras. Many are inclined to think these numbers were much lower as late as the 1960s, but reliable data is hard to come by. This chart shows increased sexual activity among teenagers in the seven years from 1988-1995. There was a modest decline in the rate from 1995-2002, especially for males and those under 18. The CDC also says there has been an increased use of contraception. These factors have likely contributed to a reduced rate of unmarried teen births.

[Index]

Substance Abuse

SOCIAL INDICATORS 2007

Until recently, in American history, drug abuse was primarily confined to the poor and certain subcultures. Drug abuse escalated and entered mainstream culture during the 1960s and 1970s. Few reliable time-series statistics exist that measure levels of drug abuse over an extended period. The most widely used statistics come from the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA). From about 1979 to 1991, these surveys were conducted by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). From 1991 to the present, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has conducted the survey. The survey was redesigned in 1999 and again in 2001, with each change making the newer data strictly non-comparable with earlier data.

The data suggests that the overall population's substance abuse peaked in the late 1970s. The percentage of the population age 12 and older that had used any illicit drug in the last month in 1979 was 14.1%. This number declined to 12.1% by 1985. Three years later, that percentage had dropped to 7.9%, and by 1992 it hit a low of 5.8%. By the late 1990s, the rate had leveled at about 6.3%. It may have risen slightly since that time. The amount of substance abuse is likely about half the level it was twenty-five years ago.

Substance abuse by youth has been consistently measured since 1975 by an organization called Monitoring the Future at the University of Michigan. Their data reveals the following:

 

• The use of any illicit drugs among high school seniors peaked in 1979.
• The use of any illicit drug excluding marijuana peaked in 1981.
• Both measures hit thirty-year lows in 1992.
• Both measures increased significantly over the next four years before stabilizing. (Likely due to a de-emphasis on enforcement of drug laws during the Clinton Administration.)
• Current rates are higher than a decade ago but are still as low as rates in the early 1970s.

• The 30-year peak in Alcohol use by High School Seniors was in 1978.
• Alcohol use declined from 1980 until 1993. It increased slightly over four years and then has declined somewhat since 1997.
• The 30-year peak in cigarette use was 1976.
• Cigarette usage dropped from 1976 until 1980, when it reached about 30%, and remained until 1993.
• Cigarette usage experienced a brief spike from 1994-1997 but has declined to its lowest rate in thirty years.
• Present usage of both Alcohol and Cigarettes is about one-third lower than their 1978 and 1976 respective highs.

The survey data does not include High School dropouts or absentees. Drug abuse is believed to be much higher among this population, but dropouts are a small and shrinking portion of the youth population. While drug use is undoubtedly much higher than before the mid-1960s, it is lower by nearly 40% from the late 1970s. There is no evidence of a widespread drug abuse epidemic in schools or among youth in general. The one caveat in this is the improper use of prescription drugs. There is evidence that this activity may be increasing, but I've seen no definitive data.

Conclusion

Rates of substance abuse give a mixed message since they have fluctuated over the last decade, but they have declined over the long term. These indicators suggest a stabilized, if not improving, quality of life related to the use of illicit drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol.

[Index]

Crime (Part 2)

SOCIAL INDICATORS 2007

Crime (Part 2)

The Columbine High School tragedy in Littleton, Colorado, in 1999, has come to symbolize a culture of pervasive youth violence. There is no question that the Columbine episode was well beyond the ordinary expression of youth violence, but was it truly symbolic of trends in youth culture?

Historical statistics about youth violence are often hard to access and assess. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has published data on school violence and crime dating from the 1992-1993 school year. Here is a summary of their findings concerning youth homicides and suicides:

The number of homicides and suicides at school has remained constant over the last decade. Homicides away from school have dropped dramatically, and suicides away from school have declined at a less rapid rate. This has occurred during a time of growth in the student population. Therefore, the homicide and suicide rates are falling. The 2004-2005 school showed an increase in both homicides and suicides away from school, the highest in six years and five years, respectively. It remains to be seen if this marks a change in the trend.

The overall violent crime (victimization) rate has dropped from 96 to 33 per 1,000 since 1993, and the theft crime rate has dropped from 59 to 22 per 1,000 in 2004 (though it increased to 24 in 2005). NCES estimates that juvenile crime victimization is at its lowest since the early 1970s. There simply is no evidence of a youth crime epidemic.

We are in one of the least violent and crime-prone eras in over thirty years, and the rates appear to be on a downward trend. Youth violence, which had surged in the early 1990s, seems driven partly by a drug sub-culture and not by widespread violent youth behavior. The highest levels of crime and violence were twenty-five years ago, as evidenced by the following data:

Conclusions

• Violent crime, after declining from at least a fifty-year high in 1981, declining in the early 1980s, and then rising again through the early 1990s, has been in a steady, significant decline since 1994.
• Property crime has been in decline since the mid-1970s.
• Violent crime is less than half as frequent as its 1981 high.
• Property crime is less than one-third as frequent as its 1975 high.
• After peaking in the early 1990s, juvenile crime has rapidly declined.
• There is no evidence of a widespread youth culture of violence.

Crime rates suggest an improving quality of life.

[Index]

Crime (Part 1)

SOCIAL INDICATORS 2007

A fundamental indicator of a deteriorating society is increased criminal behavior. Crime analysis in the United States has focused on two primary measures over the last few decades. One measure is based on crimes reported to law enforcement officers. These are compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and presented in the Uniform Crime Report (UCR). The UCR data has the advantage of measuring officially recorded events, but it is not an ideal indicator of actual crime incidents. Different types of crimes are reported at varying frequencies. For instance, nearly all murders are reported, but less than half of some property crimes are reported. Furthermore, depending on an array of political concerns, law enforcement agencies occasionally focus more resources on some crimes to the detriment of enforcement against other types of crime. This leads to higher reporting and a higher crime rate. Also, public education and changing values can cause a change in the frequency of reported crime. Nevertheless, the UCR statistics are considered an important measure.

A better measure of actual crime is the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) conducted by the US Department of Justice. The data is based on surveys of a scientifically selected population sample. Unfortunately, the survey only dates to 1973. What do UCR and NCVS data reveal?

The UCR data shows:

• A steadily increasing crime rate until about 1980.
• A decline in crime during the early 1980s.
• Violent crime rates reached a fifty-year high in 1991.
• Property crime had a less dramatic increase but also peaked in 1991.
• Both violent and property crime rates dropped dramatically in the years after 1991.
• The 2006 levels for both types of crime are similar to rates in the early 1970s.

NCVS data tell a different tale.

The NCVS data shows:

• A peak in the property crime rate in the mid-1970s.
• A steady decline in property crime until the mid-1980s, when the rate stabilized.
• Another decline in property crime during the early 1990s.
• The property crime rate plateaued in 2003, at less than one-third of the rate in 1973.
• Violent crime peaked in 1981 and then declined before stabilizing in the Mid-1980s.
• Violent began rising again in 1990 and nearly reached the 1981 peak in 1994.
• Violent crime has declined since 1994 to less than one-half the peak rate in 1981.

The NCVS data seems to tell a different story from the UCR Data. How are these two measures to be reconciled?

Rarely are changes in complex phenomena like national crime rates the consequence of a single factor. That is true here. Much of what has unfolded over the last twenty years occurs against the backdrop of drug use and law enforcement efforts concerning drug use.

The peak year for the use of illicit drugs was 1981. The UCR and NCVS data show this was also a peak time for criminal behavior. Crime rates dropped for a few years after the 1981 peak. Both measures show increased violent crime rates beginning about 1985, when a crack cocaine epidemic emerged. In response to the epidemic, the Regan Administration established the Office of National Drug Control Policy in 1988, headed by a "Drug Czar," to coordinate efforts at reducing drug abuse. Law enforcement resources were targeted toward reducing drug abuse and related crime.

There were more crime incidents during this time, as evidenced by the victimization rate. However, a higher percentage of crimes were adjudicated because of the increased focus of resources by law enforcement and the courts. A higher percentage of reported crime during a time of increasing actual instances of crime resulted in a spike in the UCR data.

The increased enforcement efforts also resulted in overcrowded prisons. Initially, some perpetrators served less prison time than they otherwise would have. The building boom for new prisons in the 1990s rectified this problem and has likely contributed to the declining crime rates. There was also a boom in private sector security technology and personnel over the past decade. This also likely contributed to the decline. [1]

Clearly, there was an increase in violent crime in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but not nearly as dramatic as the UCR statistics would suggest. Property crime actually declined during this time. While the UCR data shows a return to early 1970s UCR rates, the NCVS data shows a drop to levels that are less than half its early 1970s rate. This may mean more crimes are reported and adjudicated than 30 years ago.

Other nuances to the 1994 peak of violent crime are worthy of note. The age-adjusted homicide rate was 10.7 in 1980 and again in 1993. Notice the difference in the age configuration of the murder victims for these two years:

The homicide victimization rate declined significantly for age groups over 24 years old. The rate dramatically increased for those under 25 and doubled for teenagers. But this is not the whole story. Note the following differences between White and Black males:

The death rate for Black males ages 20-24 in 1993 reached a staggering 190 per 100,000 people. (Age-adjusted rate for the nation was 10.2.)  This was overwhelmingly Black-on-Black crime. One-third of juvenile homicide arrests happened in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Detroit, even though these cities had just 5.8% of juveniles nationwide. [2] About 1 in four juvenile homicide cases occurred in just five of the nation's more than 3,000 counties. [3]The 1980 homicide rate appears to have been more geographically and demographically disbursed. The early 1990s surge was concentrated among urban male teenagers and young men, especially those who were Black. It was directly related to the crack cocaine epidemic. [4] While the homicide rate for young Black males has been significantly decreasing in recent years, it has not decreased at the rate of other demographic groups. That such an episode occurred points to several disturbing social problems, but it does not support the idea of a broad-based cultural slide into violence.

[Continued]

[1] Bruce L. Benson, "Why Crime Declines," The Freeman, Foundation for Economic Education, January 2000. www.fee.org.

[2] Erik Lotke and Vincent Shiraldi, "An Analysis of Juvenile Homicides: Where They Occur and the Effectiveness of Adult Court Intervention," National Center on Institutions and Alternatives, July 16, 1996. 66.165.94.98/stories/analysjuv0796.html

[3] Howard N. Snyder and Melissa Sickmund, "Juvenile Victims and Offenders: 1999 National Report," National Center for Juvenile Justice, Washington, DC, September 1999. Chapter 2, p. 21. www.ncjrs.org/html/ojjdp/nationalreport99/toc.html

[4] Ibid. Chapter 3.

[Index]

Suicide

SOCIAL INDICATORS 2007

The ultimate pathology is suicide. Suicide should be on the increase in a society that is in decline. People whose mental health is at risk should increasingly be pushed over the edge due to the stresses and strains of decaying society. What is happening with suicide in the United States?

The basic measure of suicide is the crude suicide rate. The suicide rate is the number of suicides per 100,000 people. However, because suicide rates vary considerably by stage of life, an age-adjusted suicide rate is also calculated. This rate is obtained by dividing the population into age segments and calculating the rate per 100,000 people for that segment. Each segment rate is then weighted by its proportion of the total population. The sum of these weighted age-specific rates is the age-adjusted rate. Here is the Age-Adjusted Suicide rate for 1960-2004.

The age-adjusted rate peaked in 1977 at 13.7. It declined significantly over the next three years but steadily increased to 12.8 in 1986. It has declined steadily to a forty-year low of 10.4 in 2000. This is a decline of nearly 25% over the past 25 years.

The overall rate does not tell the whole story. When rates are examined by five-year age categories, a more nuanced story emerges. Look at the years for the highest and lowest suicide rates by age for the period 1960-2004:

The trend for teenagers has been a steady increase in the suicide rate until about 1987. The rate plateaued until about 1994 and began to decline again. (This parallels the youth murder rate, which I will visit in a later post.) The teenage rate declined to 7.3 in 2003 before rising to 8.2 in 2004. It is unclear if this signals long-term change. Young adults experienced an increase, but the rate peaked in the late 1970s. It declined some in the early 1980s and plateaued. The rate began dropping again in the mid-1990s and plateaued at 12-12.5.

The oldest half of the age range experienced the highest rates in the early 1960s. The rates declined until about 1980, when they began to rise again, although they did not reach previous heights. By 1990 the rates had started to decline. As of 2004, the rates are the lowest ever for persons over 65.

Conclusions

• Age-adjusted suicide rate is near a forty-year low.
• Suicide rates have improved for adults and worsened for children over the past forty years, although that rate for children has been dropping for the last decade.

This seems to suggest an overall improvement in quality of life.

[Index]

Infant Mortality and Life Expectancy

SOCIAL INDICATORS 2007 (USA)

Infant Mortality and Life Expectancy

Several factors contribute to having a high quality of life. These include safe environments, adequate diet, adequate health care, sufficient education, adequate financial resources, and nurturing families and communities, to name just a few. There are measures that tell us about each of these variables, but when looking for broad quality-of-life measures, demographers tend to start with two. One is the infant mortality rate, and the other is life expectancy at birth.

The infant mortality rate is the number of children that die between birth to 1 year of age per 1,000 live births. This measure is important because these children are the most vulnerable members of any society. Measuring how well the most vulnerable survive tells us something about a population's overall quality of life.

The second measure is life expectancy at birth. Everyone dies eventually, but a society with a high quality of life will have organized itself to minimize the number of premature deaths in its population.

What do these two measures tell us about American society?

 

 

 

 

Throughout most of recorded history, the infant mortality rate has been estimated to be about 250 per 1,000 live births. Early in the 1900s, the rate was well over 100 in the United States. The rate appears to have leveled off in recent years, and it remains to be seen if some minimum barrier has been attained.

 

Life expectancy at birth in the United States in 1900 was just under fifty years. While life expectancy has increased by eight or nine years over the last fifty years, it improved by nearly twenty in the first fifty years of the Twentieth Century. With continued advances in biotechnology, how high this rate may rise remains to be seen.

These two measures illustrate the remarkable advances we have experienced in recent generations due to health care, sanitation, education, workplace reforms, and technology. No populations in the past, and few populations in the present, have experienced the high quality of life Americans enjoy today.

Conclusions

• The infant mortality rate has dropped more than 75% over the past fifty years.
• Life expectancy has continued steadily climbing for the previous fifty years (and the previous century, though not reported here.)

These two broad societal indicators signify an improving quality of life.

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American Social Indicators, 2007

Is American society coming apart? This is a question I have heard asked over and over again in recent years. On more than one occasion, I've heard comparisons made to the moral decay and fall of the Roman Empire.

Frankly, I think most of us suffer from a parochialism of the present (Phrase stolen from George Will). Idealists and intellectuals often see themselves as out on the bleeding edge of the next great leap in human existence. Traditionalists often believe that the present is the worst era yet in American history. For nearly all of us, only those events that have happened during our lifetime seem to have substance. Everything else seems to be a part of a murky, distant past.

Parochialism of the present is an understandable human proclivity. However, when people start embracing utopian solutions to problems without having learned from those who have gone before them, or when others support draconian measures to prevent the collapse of society without placing present problems within the ebbs and flows of history, we tend to create greater problems than the ones we think we are addressing.

I have a dozen social indicators posts that I will post over the next two weeks or so. (This series is an update I've done each of the past two years in Nov-Dec, but I'm running a little late this time.) I will look at some statistical indicators from demography, sociology, economics, and other fields that social scientists consider broad quality-of-life indicators. Depending on the indicator, we will look at timeframes of 30-50 years to get a sense of what trajectory things are on. I am sure you have heard the expression, "It's easy to lie with statistics." That's true. But it is even easier to lie without them! Quantified observations are a good place to start a conversation about social forces at work in the culture.

Is America in decline? Let's take a look.

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