Americans are spending less on clothes and eating out and more on household fuel bills and healthcare, according to data from the Bureau of Labour Statistics.

It's those social processes, which have driven demographic changes within U.S. households, that are almost exclusively behind the observed increase in family and household income inequality observed in the U.S. since the 1960s.

During the 2004-2006 bubble, the median size of a first lien for purchasing in New York was more than $300,000. How could so many New Yorkers afford these huge loans? There were several reasons, but one of the most important was the growing availability of what became known as “piggy-back” second liens.

If it feels like you're paying more in property taxes, it's probably because you are.

Since the onset of the Great Recession, states have favored expenditure reductions over tax increases. Given the economic environment throughout the recession, which had a large number of similarities to the early 1990s including a deep housing downturn and prices that outpaced incomes, these actions seem appropriate.

The dynamism of the U.S. labor market is generally underappreciated, and has received almost no attention from those complaining about income inequality and stagnant household income. Contrary to prevailing public opinion that households get stuck at a given income level for decades or generations, there is strong empirical evidence that households move up and down the economic ladder over even very short periods of... More

State Budget Solutions' (SBS) second annual state deficit report reveals aggregate state debt presently exceeds $4 trillion.In predicting states' future economic performance, New York, Vermont, Maine, California and Hawaii scored the lowest.

The President suggested last week that parents were going to have to explain to their children why their favorite teachers have been fired thanks to Republican opposition to additional stimulus to save local jobs. The Vice President went even further, suggesting we could see a rise in violent crime including rape and murder thanks to layoffs of police.
But what this hyperbolic rhetoric ignores is that local government has... More

Analysts increasingly believe that 2011 will mark the bottom in home prices. Most national price indexes adjusted for seasonal influences have stopped falling on a month-to-month basis.

Public sector workers were significantly more likely than their private-sector counterparts to get hurt or sick on the job last year, according to a new report.

Perhaps Stanley Thornton will be the giant straw that causes a policy breakthrough in our failing disability system. Thornton  is a 350 pound “adult baby” who receives disability benefits. Earlier this week it was decided that he was not fraudulently on the Social Security rolls.

1,946,000 fewer teens and young adults between the ages of 15 and 24 were counted as having earned income of any kind between 2006 and 2010, falling from 27,360,000 in 2006 to 25,414,000 in 2010.

The U.S. capital has swapped top spots with Silicon Valley, according to recent Census Bureau figures, with the typical household in the Washington metro area earning $84,523 last year. The national median income for 2010 was $50,046.

High rates of unemployment and benefits lasting up to 99 weeks have led 34 states to borrow over $37 billion from the federal government to pay benefits. States are not expected to repay these amounts for some time and must begin paying interest on their balances in 2011.

Claims of long-term middle America stagnation are often part of a broader argument about the adverse impact of globalization, outsourcing, and free trade. And middle class stagnation is used as motivation for a specific set of policies. But if middle America has not stagnated then the motivation for those policies is without merit.

In total, giving by the top income class accounted for 24 percent of charitable donations from all taxpayers in 2008. The destinations for those donated funds varied tremendously by income class, however. The most noticeable trend is that as income rises, proportional giving to religious organizations falls.

California investors are a pessimistic bunch, and those in Southern California are even more negative than those in the north, especially on the subject of unemployment and the state budget deficit, a study shows.

Whether you appreciate it or not, your employer pays quite a bit of money, above and beyond the amount you see on your paycheck to keep you on their payroll. This tool estimates how much that is...

Canada’s stronger economy is becoming a magnet for Americans hunting for work. In a reversal of historical flows, immigrationMore

Unemployment rate projections, courtesty of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

One of the common memes about tax policy is that President Obama just wants to return the tax code to where it was during the Clinton years.  The problem is, this is just not true.

A sharp decline in fertility rates in the United States that started in 2008 is closely linked to the souring of the economy that began about the same time, according to a new analysis of multiple economic and demographic data sources by the Pew Research Center.

Although many people automatically assume that inequality leads to misery, taken as a whole, the happiness gap (the gap between the least and the most satisfied) seems to have a weak relationship with income inequality.

Some employees face financial incentives that encourage them not to work, and some employers face financial incentives not to create jobs.

The combination of the rapid rise in the number of workers and the far more rapid rise in employee costs in some local governments has led a number of analysts to predict a retrenchment at the state and local level unlike what we have witnessed anytime in the recent past. As a report by the National Governors' Association noted last year, the old tactic of simply cutting spending or raising taxes isn't enough at this... More

Rather than a cheap yuan leading to a flood of Chinese imports, the yuan has actually strengthened as the U.S. trade deficit has widened.

No one has given me a good explanation yet of why young American college grads should have been hit so hard. Is there increased competition with young college grads around the world?  Are new college grads lower quality than their predecessors? Has information technology reduced the need for young grads? I really would like to know.

Passengers love to accuse the airlines of gouging, and a dizzying array of fares adds to the outrage. But airlines, caught between a steady decline in fares and rising costs, have no choice but to look for every nickel they can find. Passenger tickets now account for just 71% of U.S. airlines' total passenger revenue, down from 88% in 1990, according to the DOT.

The new proposal targets very high-income taxpayers with incomes over $1 million, so I thought it would be interesting to look at a "typical" millionaire and see how such a taxpayer would be affected.

The elderly are one group whose work hours now exceed what they were before the recession began. This pattern is most evident in the most depressed regions of the United States.

We see a significant number of Baby Boomers had checked out of actively participating in the U.S. economy by 2005, even though the oldest boomers are just now reaching 'normal' retirement age.

Private job creation and private business investment are so closely linked that the current “jobless recovery” could also be described as an “investment-less recovery.” The chart above helps to show that it’s not a lack of consumer spending, weak gains in personal income, or sluggish real output growth that are holding back job creation. Rather, it’s weak business investment spending that ... More

As the exodus of taxpayers from the Empire State continued during the past decade, nearly 60 percent of the New York out-migrants moved to southern states—with Florida alone drawing nearly one-third of the total. And taxpayers who left the state had income that was on average 22 percent higher than those who migrated into the state.

This map shows per capita state and local sales tax collections. Wyoming comes in highest at $2,303 per person; at the other end are Oregon, Montana, Delaware, and New Hampshire, which lack a sales tax at any level.

Investors are often lured to countries like India and Vietnam by their demographic promise—by their fast-growing population of workers and consumers. Likewise, investors in China often worry that it “will grow old before it grows rich”. Demographics are not destiny, but they are a noteworthy determinant of economic potential.