NAPC Conference, Day Two

Last night at the NAPC conference we had a nice reception where Irv Katz, from the National Human Services Assembly, addressed us on some of the critical issues they're addressing -- you can see what's on their policy agenda here: National Assembly

After a series of participant introductions this morning (fascinating work being done around the country and Canada by members), the focus turned to where we are now economically. Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute addressed us.

Heidi -- "The Recession is Over -- but over for whom?"

In past recessions, quick bounce-back in employment after the recession -- until the last two recessions. In early  1990s, "jobless recovery" term was coined. In early 2000s, recession ended with a 'job-loss recovery." That's what we're facing now -- jobless (or perhaps job-loss) recovery. So the key benchmark isn't GDP growth but unemployment rate -- now 9.7 nationally, will likely continue to rise through the end of thisyear and will reach its peak then --we're not going to feel like a recovery util next year.

Now we're in the calm after the storm, looking at the damage in the labor market. We've lost over 8 million jobs, but population rising -- so we need to add on the order of 100,000 jobs a month just to keep unemployment stable. Overall, we're really down 11 million jobs (job losses + labor market growth) to get to pre-recession unemployment levels.

Layoffs are now down to pre-recession levels -- that's good. But hiring has not picked up -- that's bad. In fact, the peak of the business cycle in 2007 is still worse than the pre-recession late 1990s -- we hit this current recession in the worst shape with the least cushion of any prior recession (post-Depression).

After recession of the 1990s was over, had year and a half of increasing unemployment before it started to improve. The same thing in the early 2000s. We're seeing the same thing now. (And that's not counting the discouraged workers!)

In fact, when we add in the unemployed, involuntary part-time, and marginally employed workers, we're up to 17 percent underemployment -- up from around 7 in 2000. Largest increase isn't in discouraged workers  (which is still a big increase) but in involuntary part-timers. "The huge involuntary part-time is a threat to reducing unemployment." Employers who cut hours, not workers, to cut costs, means that employers can increase production by adding hours, not workers, further delaying any new hiring. And when jobs do pick up, 3 million more people will enter into the labor market if the labor market participation returns to normal -- meaning job growth won't move the dial on unemployment rate for a while.

The overall unemployment rate masks other issues. Men have been harder hit than women in the recession. Racial and ethnic minorities hit harder than whites. People with less education getting hit harder too. Young workers hit much harder -- nearly 20 percent of 16 to 24 unemployed. Older workers, on the other hand, have been slammed on the wealth  front (housing value, retirement funds), while younger workers are slammed in the labor market.

In labor market, the chart seems to show that best case scenario is older white college-educated woman -- hardest hit is young black male without high school education.

This summer people leaving school now face the worst labor market in 70 years. (Sucks to be born in the 80's, and not just because of the music and hair!) We're also looking at a 8-10 year swath of long-term unemployment for younger people. Without summer jobs, what are young people going to do with their time? School enrollment going up, but not matching the growth in non-labor market participation. Growth in Nene's -- not enrolled, not employed.

Seeing increased labor market participation among older workers -- because of attack on wealth, people not retiring. Stock market improvement might help unemployment rate.

Long-term unemployment recession -- shattering every record for length of unemployment. We haven't reached the peak of unemployment in the 80s recession, but the length of unemployment is unprecedented. Number of job seekers per  job opening is huge -- 5.5 people per job. So extending unemployment insurance doesn't keep people from taking jobs -- there aren't jobs for them to take.

"The worst recession since the Great Depression? Absolutely."

The recession started out super-mild, until Lehman Brothers -- the collapse of the financial market accelerated the recession to unbelievable levels -- at one point losing 700,000 jobs a month. Also twice as many people in the country now since the Great Depression -- principle of large numbers say the impacts in places with the large numbers affected has an exponential effect.

What's in store? We do not have to settle for permanently high unemployment. But the short and medium term are going to be ugly. Recovery will take a long time. To fill the 11 million jobs gap, we would need 1 million new jobs a month to fill it in 1 year. To fill in 5 years, we would need nearly 300,000 jobs a month (every month!) The latest "really good news" had 167,000 new jobs in a month. Projections: 10.1 unemployment averaged this year, 9.5 next year, 8 in 2012, 2013 6.3 percent unemployment -- still worse than the worst year of the early 2000s recession.

Again, communities are facing long-term ugly unemployment and it could take much longer to fill the jobs gap. Projections still based on people behaving the same way they did before the recession -- but people aren't behaving the same way, and not retiring when projected because they can't afford to. And social security is in trouble.

Clear relationship between unemployment rates and family income. Real family middle income has been hammered. The 2000s recovery never got family income back to pre-recession levels, and now with this recession even in 2015 the typical family income will not get back to where it was at the low point of the early 2000s recession, let alone as high as it was in the pre-2000s recession time. There's no upward pressure on wage growth, and won't be for a while.

Overall poverty rate around 15 percent -- not dropping down to turn-of-the century rates by 2015. And  for kids it's worse, and for racial and ethnic minorities worse -- about 1/3 black poverty rate now, perhaps down to 24 percent in 2015.

So what should be done? Communities are going to be suffering a lot for at least the next five years -- things will get better over time. National level answer? Heidi says it's more stimulus dollars, and much more. Real, measurable GDP change with the Recovery Act -- estimated 2.5 million more job losses without it, is on track to reach 3-4 million jobs, just wasn't on the right scope of this crisis. Really need something on the scope of $1.5 trillion.

Can we afford it? What about the deficit? 2 time horizons: short-term and long-term. A key way to bring the deficit down is to deficit-spend to create jobs. What has added to the deficit? Increases in the deficit: Bank bailout: $184 billion (TARP) about 15 percent increase in deficit. 15 percent ($181 billion) is stimulus. $841 billion is the recession -- high unemployment, low income, business loss, resulting in fewer taxes paid. So deficit-spend to create taxpayers is the long-term solution to deal with the deficit, according to Heidi Shierholz.

We need to bail out state and local governments. The most job bang for the buck is state fiscal relief. Because states must balance the budget, they have to either raise taxes or cut services, and both of them drain the economy. National stimulus packages would otherwise just fight against "50 Herbert Hoovers" at the state level counterbalancing economic stimulus efforts with economic drains.

"This recession, make no mistake, was the bursting of the housing bubble -- the bursting of an $8 trillion housing bubble is what creates something like this." And the roots of the problems go back through multiple political administrations.

(Then we got talking about the intersection of economics and politics, and folks got really, really depressed. I won't even go there.)

Heidi's presentation will be available at www.communityplanning.org. For those of us at the conference, the presentation challenges us to re-examine what community planning and community-based work looks like. For those who like economic indicators, check out the charts in Heidi's presentation and think about the economic indicators you might be using in your community to monitor these changes -- and how you might best tell the story of the unprecedented impacts of this recession.

ETA: Here's Heidi's presentation: click here

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New Economic Measures

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article in its April 8 edition called "New Ways to Read Economy: Experts Scour Oddball Data to Help See Trends Before Official Information Is Available." (The link will be available for non-paid subscribers for 7 days only).

I'm quoted in it, but that's not why you should read the article. The point of the piece is that, in the changing/turbulent/volatile economic times we're in, traditional economic measures might be too slow (or antiquated) to tell us what we need to know. So many of us are turning to new data sources that are quicker, localized, and more responsive.

The article begins:

When the city's top economist needs a rough prediction of sales tax revenues, he watches the number of subway passengers emerging from the Powell Street Station on Saturdays.



Ted Egan, chief economist in the San Francisco Controller's Office, said he could wait six months for California to release the detailed sales-tax data he needs for city revenue projections. But it's quicker to look at passenger tallies from the station closest to the Union Square shopping district, which generates roughly 10% of the city's sales-tax revenue. The Bay Area Rapid Transit District releases the data within three days, he said: "Why should I have to wait?"


Mr. Egan is among a growing number of economists and urban planners who scour for economic clues in unconventional urban data—oddball measures of how people are moving, spending and working.

Broadway ticket sales are a favorite indicator for the chief economist of the New York City Economic Development Corp., Francesco Brindisi. He says they are a good gauge of city tourism.

In Jacksonville, Fla., community planner Ben Warner keeps tabs on calls to the city's 2-1-1 hotline for social services. Since late 2008, he has seen spikes in calls for help with food, housing, utilities payments and suicide prevention. It is "direct, real-time monitoring of the economic and social situation," he said.

I'm a big fan of nontraditional indicators -- they force us to look at our communities through fresh eyes.

If you had been called by the reporter (her name is Cari Tuna, and I found her a delightful professional to work with!), what other examples could you have provided?

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Economic Stress Index

Take a moment to play with the Economic Stress Index put together by the AP. It measures unemployment rates, foreclosures, and bankruptcy filings and combines them into an index using this formula:

[1 - [(1 - unemployment rate) x (1 - foreclosure rate) x (1 - bankruptcy rate)]] x 100

The data are available for every county in the United States with a nice mouseover function on a color-coded map.

Take a look, and think about (1) how the data might be useful in your local community indicators project and (2) how the visualization might be a nice kind of tool for you to use.

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Defending GDP: WSJ Opinion

On the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal Online, Brian Domitrovic poses a novel defense of GDP as a measure of national progress: President Sarkozy only wants to change the measure because he's "losing."

The argument goes something like this: The U.S. has high GDP. France once was on par with the U.S. France didn't follow Reagan and Thatcher in 1982 deregulation. So Frane's only interest in challenging GDP as a measure is to "move the goalposts" and develop a different measure of progress that shows them as competitive.

At no point in this article does Domitrovic display any hints that he has read the report of the Stiglitz commission (at one point, he suggests a measure of leisure time ought to be included in the report, because he says France is good at that. In the U.S., we work so much because we want to, and would spurn additional vacationif offered.)

We've talked about the flaws of GDP for some time now, and the need to measure progress more broadly. I don't think we need to re-hash those discussions. But you might want to see this op-ed piece just to remind yourself that change alwwys meets with resistance, even if that resistance involved merely sticking one's fingers in one's ears and extending the tongue in gratuitous French-bashing.

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BEA Delays Release of Personal Income Data

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has issued the following announcement today:

State personal income statistics for the second quarter of 2009 and comprehensive revisions to those statistics for earlier periods that had been scheduled for release tomorrow, Friday, September 18, instead will be released on Friday, October 16.

BEA had accelerated the production of the revised state personal income statistics that are consistent with the recently-released comprehensive revision of the GDP statistics, with the aim of releasing those statistics more quickly than in previous comprehensive revisions. Due to discrepancies just discovered in the data, we are unable to meet the accelerated schedule. We apologize for the delay; but the statistics BEA produces must meet our standards for accuracy.

More information available at www.bea.gov.

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Recession Metrics: Underwear and Donuts

For an interesting look at key indicators of economic well-being, see this article from TIME Magazine's Brad Tuttle. In it, he refers to this Washington Post graphic/article on an Underwear Index, showing that as times get tough, men wear underwear longer and the sales of this clothing necessity dip.

Tuttle also (in another blog article) highlights the things we buy more of during a recession.

It's another creative indicator set ... but I don't think we'll be using this indicator in our community reports any time soon.

Please keep sending me the interesting metrics you find out there!

(Hat tip goes to Elaine Pace)

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Softer, Subjective Indicators

Here's an interesting piece about work from William Tov of Singapore Management University called "Beyond economic data: softer, subjective indicators of a nation’s well-being." I thought you might enjoy some of what he had to say.

Here are some excerpts I liked:

A society’s GDP per capita has an influence over its level of tolerance. Some researchers have suggested that because wealthier nations tended to have greater income equality and access to education, they are able to address the misinformation that often compounds prejudice. Another suggestion is that a society’s level of intolerance reflects of its own sense of security - when people or nations have their basic needs met, they feel secure and will less likely be threatened by those who are different from them. But to what extent is a society’s well-being related to its level of tolerance or intolerance?

According to Tov’s study, which incorporated data from the ‘World Values Survey’, high levels of trust and well-being are more prevalent in societies where there is a greater value placed on tolerance, higher GDP per capita, greater freedom and lower levels of filial piety. The study found that though tolerant societies do not necessarily oppose competition, competition tended to be viewed more positively in an intolerant society. Tov suggested, “Perhaps in these societies, zero-sum competition is emphasised because it justifies inequities and intolerant attitudes. On the other hand, those countries in which intolerance is high also tend to be less wealthy, have less freedom and (value) greater filial piety.” One possibility is that when basic needs are not adequately met, relationships with one’s family and friends might be closer knit, so as to better compete for resources as a matter of survival. “In societies where filial piety is high and in-group bonds are presumably stronger, people are less likely to mention tolerance as an important quality for their child to possess,” he added. Both volunteer involvement and the number of voluntary memberships were also seen to be closely linked with a nation’s well-being.

In communities, we often measure some of these social capital measures, including volunteer involvement and tolerance measures. (I don't know of a community indicators project in the U.S. that measures rates of filial piety, however. Do you?)

The concept, though, that economic strength derives from social cohesiveness echoes both Richard Florida's and Robert Putnam's work. It's an interesting addition to our conversation about moving beyond GDP as a measure on national progress.

Thoughts?

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Unemployment and Job Loss Data

We now have a new source for trying to understand underemployment numbers. The standard unemployment data we use obscure a significant number of workers and don't tell a complete story. Our friends at the Community Action Network (CAN) in Austin, Texas describe the issue this way:

The official unemployment rate includes people without a job who are available to work and who have actually sought work in the past four weeks. Discouraged workers and under-employed part-time workers who want full employment are not included in this rate. For the first time, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is releasing "labor underutilization rates" by state that do include these populations.

So what does that mean for your state? In Florida, while the official 2008 unemployment rate was 6.1 percent, by using a broader definition that includes discouraged workers and the underemployed we get a much higher percentage, nearly double, at 11.9 percent. Check out the BLS data sets for yourself. The other thing that would make this more useful for community planning is if they had the data available at the community level. But this is a good start.

CAN also wanted to make sure we knew about another resource. I looked at this last month, couldn't get it to work for me, and gave up -- but maybe this will work for you. At Slate magazine they have a map for you to play with to see county-by-county job losses. They describe the map this way:

Using the Labor Department's local area unemployment statistics, Slate presents the recession as told by unemployment numbers for each county in America. Because the data are not seasonally adjusted for natural employment cycles throughout the year, the numbers you see show the change in the number of people employed compared with the same month in the previous year. Blue dots represent a net increase in jobs, while red dots indicate a decrease. The larger the dot, the greater the number of jobs gained or lost. Click the arrows or calendar at the bottom to see each month of data. Click the green play button to see an animation of the data.

Now, if I wasn't having problems with my flash player every time I went to this site, I'm sure that's exactly what I'd see. This gives us more localized information, so this may be a useful resource for your community.

And thanks for the updates! Keep sharing this kind of information!

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New Community Indicators

I'm always excited when I run across new ideas for community indicators, or new ways at getting at interesting information.

The Freakonomics blog suggested we take a look at The Mailman Index of Economic Indicators (yes, I know Mail Carrier has been the preferred term for over a decade, but that's what they called it.) Here's what they have to suggest:

If you live in a neighborhood hard hit by the financial crisis, chances are your mailman is seeing a spike in overdraft letters, collection notices, and overdue utility bills. Another bad sign: more names on fewer mailboxes — a hint that families and friends are doubling up to save money. Your mailman is probably also seeing a drop-off in the number of unsolicited credit card offers as the credit crisis deepens.

A reader of their blog suggests a different economic indicator: availability of parking spaces around neighborhood high schools. His(?) anecdotal observations suggest that fewer students drive their own cars to school during economic downturns, and more drive (and take up all the available spaces, spreading into the surrounding neighborhood and those durn kids should just git off his lawn!)

Keep those innovative suggestions for community indicators coming! (My favorite is still female bicyclists as measures of urban sprawl, safety, public health, and democratization of society ... but pickups and politics was fun as well. I'm sure better ideas are just around the corner.)

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Statistics on the Economy

As we're starting to get tired of watching the vacillations of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (and thinking about who we can sue for whiplash), we may want to look at other economic indicators. The Reporting Statistics blog has a nice summary of statistical data sources for economic conditions in the United States. If nothing else, the list should help distract us for a while.

For those who feel up to it, information aesthetics has a really good list of visualizations of the credit crisis. If you mouseover the banks on this graph, you get a stark realization of how much they have shrunk in value.

One more for good measure: The largest point gains and losses in the stock market, and the largest percentage gains and losses. Sometimes it's helpful to add context.

If you have other data sources or visualizations that would be helpful, please let me know.

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American Human Development Project

The American Human Development Project is an interesting data resource and attempt to create a national indicator set to "stimulate fact-based public debate about and political attention to human development issues in the United States and to empower people to hold elected officials accountable for progress on issues we all care about: health, education, and income."

The site includes a report, The Measure of America: American Human Development Report 2008-2009; a set of interactive maps that let you select indicators like SAT scores, army recruits, or obesity rates; and the most intriguing (and awfully-named) section, the Well-O-Meter.

The Well-O-Meter starts off with a series of questions about yourself. Some of them are odd -- after asking my gender, it also asked if I were a woman who received annual gynecological checkups AND if I were a man over 40 who had annual checkups. Income and education were asked in two separate ways. Overall, it was an interesting set of questions -- made as interesting but what wasn't asked as by what was. At the end, it gives you a score, and then plots your score against some comparatives. So while race/ethnicity and region of the country are factors the Well-O-Meter think are significant for health differences, it asks about neither for you personally.

It does ask about family characteristics, health events, and life expectancy -- which is quite interesting, since the purpose of the site otherwise seems to be arguing for public policy debates about shared community characteristics.

I thought you might enjoy playing with the site and seeing what information it has on your community. The attempt to link you personally with the larger community/national picture is an intriguing concept, though I suspect it would have been more useful to place the individual answers within the geographical context that the site is mapping already.

What are your reactions to the site?

(Hat tip: Media General News Service -- read the article!)

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In Praise of GDP

We've been talking about the need for broader indicators of progress than the Gross Domestic Product, and that need has launched an international summit and a new presidential commission in France.

Turns out, however, that some folks like the GDP just fine, thank you very much, and don't want it meddled with. Justin Fox opines in TIME magazine:

...[C]ompiling a reliable measure of all the economic activity in a country as big as this one is hard. Which is something to consider whenever you hear somebody arguing that GDP ought to be shelved in favor of some more holistic measure of economic well-being. Somebody like, say, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who early this year appointed a high-powered task force--boasting not just one but two economics Nobelists, Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz--to devise a GDP replacement. Similar "ditch-GDP" noises can be heard frequently from enlightened sorts who care a lot about the environment, health care, education and happiness.

Now, there certainly are measures of economic and societal success that we ought to pay more attention to. But ditch GDP? Perish the thought.

One reason the GDP is getting a lot more love lately comes from the work by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers where they show a positive correlation between GDP and happiness. From The New York Times report:

“The central message,” Ms. Stevenson said, “is that income does matter.”

To see what they mean, take a look at the map that accompanies this column. It’s based on Gallup polls done around the world, and it clearly shows that life satisfaction is highest in the richest countries. The residents of these countries seem to understand that they have it pretty good, whether or not they own an iPod Touch.

If anything, Ms. Stevenson and Mr. Wolfers say, absolute income seems to matter more than relative income. In the United States, about 90 percent of people in households making at least $250,000 a year called themselves “very happy” in a recent Gallup Poll. In households with income below $30,000, only 42 percent of people gave that answer.

Here's the chart they reference:



What are your reactions?

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Happiness, Per Capita Income, and Indicators

A few recent news stories may be of interest to this group.

Income and Happiness: An Imperfect Link has Robert H. Frank looking at the convoluted relationship between per capita income, GDP, inflation adjustments, quality of life, and happiness. If anyone is measuring per capita income (or similar measures of average income as a measure of progress), this article is for you.

Newsweek, on the other hand, published Happiness: Enough Already, suggesting that the search for happiness (and how we measure it) is perhaps not the quest we should be on.

Back to economic measures (and education and other quality of life factors): A mini-tempest on talk radio has surrounded the latest World Bank report on progress towards gender equality in the Middle East and North Africa. The data are available to discuss, and the measures are straight-forward enough: education levels, literacy, life expectancy, unemployment rates, etc. Take a look at the progress towards closing the gender gap -- are you measuring similar indicators of gender disparity in your community?

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Focus on Social Indicators

In India, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry heard that social indicators eclipse India's economic growth. The President of the Papua New Guinea Chamber of Commerce called out the government, saying “We need to improve our social indicators … and we have to make the bulk of the community feel they are involved. Now is the time for action …” And in Nigeria, the chair of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission observes that Nigeria's oil wealth means little when "the country's basic social indicators place it among the 20 poorest countries in the world."

So what are these news stories telling us?

Increasingly, economic development is being seen as part of the larger picture of progress, and not the picture itself. That's one reason why we're seeing increased empasis on measuring and tracking social indicators as a key responsibility of governments and NGOs.

One such report was just released by the Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics (IBGE). The Summary of Social Indicators 2007 – An Analysis of Life Conditions of the Brazilian Population – is mainly formed by data from the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) and contains specific chapters on: Education, Households, Families, Marriages, Judicial Separations and Divorces, Color, Women, Elderly Persons, Teenagers and Youngsters.

While some indicators show improvement, the survey found 235 thousand children aged 10-17 who were working in the streets. The employment rate of children was higher in families headed by women: 44.1%, versus 40.3% in families headed by men. At the same time, school attendance for children aged 4-6 years increased over ten years from 53.8% to 76.0% -- a remarkable improvement, but with plenty of room for improvement.

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Index of Economic Well-Being

Last fall I had an opportunity to spend some time with Lars Osberg at a conference put on by PEKEA. The conversation about indicators of social progress was energetic and productive, which was readily apparent even though most of it was in French.

I bring this up to pass on the exciting work Lars Osberg has been doing with an Index of Economic Well-Being. He makes the point that increases in real per capita income or national GDP alone do not answer the question "are you better off today than you were four years ago?" (One of Dr. Osberg's papers, The Measurement of Economic Welfare, points out that Ronald Reagan used that line to win the U.S. presidency, even though per capita disposable income was higher in 1980 by 8.8 percent than it was in 1976.)

The Index measures four components of economic well-being:

• Effective per capita consumption flows, including consumption of marketed goods and services; government services; effective per capita flows of household production; leisure; and changes in life span.
  
• Net societal accumulation of stocks of productive resources, including net accumulation of tangible capital; housing stocks; net changes in the value of natural resources stocks; environmental costs; net changes in the level of foreign indebtedness; accumulation of human capital; and the stock of R&D investment.
  
• Income distribution, including the intensity of poverty (incidence and depth) and the inequality of income.
  
• Economic security from job loss and unemployment, illness, family breakup, and poverty in old age.

You can read a series of talks, articles, and presentations from Dr. Osberg on his website.

The question "are you better off?" is a personal one, and can really only be answered by individuals. The real question for social policy (and for the social indicators that support or direct that policy) should be: "is the community better off?"

That's what indicators of social progress are trying to measure, and Dr. Osberg's Index provides one way to answer that question. It's worth checking out.

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Measuring Poverty, Part II

In an earlier post we discussed the National Center for Children in Poverty and its factsheet on Measuring Income and Poverty in the United States.

Another useful data resource for measuring poverty is The Poverty Site, which calls itself "The UK site for statistics on poverty and social exclusion." It contains 50 indicators associated with poverty in the United Kingdom, including income, employment, education, health, and crime, and has spearate reports for Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and rural England.

The site also reports on the European Union (Laeken) indicators, which it explains are "a core set of poverty and social exclusion indicators which are regularly produced for every EU country on a comparable basis."

You may also be interested in the The World Bank's discussion of poverty indicators, including the Millennium Development Goals (data on the goals available here).

What are the key resources you turn to in order to measure poverty in your community?

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Measuring Poverty

The National Center for Children in Poverty has a new fact sheet out, called Measuring Income and Poverty in the United States.

The fact sheet deals with the following questions:

• How does the United States measure poverty?
• Why is the current poverty measure inadequate?
• Are there alternative ways to measure poverty?
• How much does it really take to make ends meet?

Based on the answers to these questions, NCCP has developed a "Basic Needs Budget" as an alternative measure of what it takes to make it in a number of communities across the U.S.

You can download the PDF document here.

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How "Tax-Friendly" Is Your City and State?

While discussing economic indicators, I received a site that may prove interesting to some of you. CNNMoney.com provided a 2006 data set ranking states on tax-friendliness (measured as the per capita tax burden as a percentage of the per capita income.)

The data set also includes the 51 largest cities, and is provided in sortable tables.

The 2007 data set includes state-by-state and city comparisons, but adds to that income tax, sales tax, property tax, and retiree breaks information. The family tax burden comparison ranks 51 cities by the income, property, sales, and auto taxes on a family of three making $100,000 per year. (Jacksonville, Florida, where I live, ranks 49 out of the 51 cities.)

However, in this chart, they don't factor per capita taxes by per capita income, which I found a more useful comparison in the 2006 data set (though Jacksonville's ranking didn't change between the two formats.)

You may find this data useful -- though you may have some suggestions how how to think about tax data as part of a community indicator set. A ratio of per capita taxes compared to per child education funding may be interesting, for example -- the same data labeled as "tax burden" could also be labeled "government services support" or something similar, after all.

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Economic Indicators

Last week, a White House spokeperson made the claim that "the economic surge that began five and a half years ago on President Bush's watch is more robust than the much-touted expansion during the Clinton administration."

"This is a much stronger expansion in a lot of ways," White House spokesman Tony Fratto told The Examiner. "It's much deeper and more measured."

The Examiner provides "dueling data points" that examine the question:

From the Bush camp:

• Real wages rose 1.8 percent over the 12 months through February. This is substantially faster than the average rate of wage growth in the late 1990s.
• Since the first quarter of 2001, productivity growth has averaged 2.8 percent. This is well above average productivity growth during the Clinton years.

From the Clinton camp:

• Under Clinton, the economy created 3.5 times more jobs after 74 months than it did over the same period of time under Bush.
• During the Bush years, the number of Americans below the poverty line has increased by 5.37 million, while under Clinton the number fell by 7.68 million.

An editorial in the Investor's Business Daily looks at the same claim, and asks: But how do you measure "stronger"?

The economic indicators that they use are the unemployment rate, new job creation, real after-tax income, and real wages. And from that they conclude the Bush economy is "stronger" than the Clinton economy.

The Economic Policy Institute uses different indicators to argue the picture is different:

This much is clear: the current recovery substantially lags the historical average in GDP growth, employment growth, investment in equipment and software, and, with the deflating housing market, even in residential investment. Conversely, corporate profit growth in the current recovery (despite a 3% dip in the last quarter of 2006) has been almost twice as rapid as in the past.

Dr. Larry Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute showed some of the limitations of economic indicators at a joint conference of the National Association of Planning Councils and the Community Indicators Consortium in 2005. His powerpoint presentation is here.

How do you measure economic vitality? How do you measure local or community economic vitality? In Jacksonville, Florida, an economist at the local university provides a set of local economic indicators that measure indicators of local industry stock performance, unemployment rates, consumer price index, and a leading economic index. Dr. Paul Mason provides a page of links to international, national, state, and local economic data. A separate community effort provides a broader set of community economic indicators that include measures of poverty and government assistance as well as average wages and unemployment but lacks the timeliness of Dr. Mason's work.

What are the best indicators to measure the strength of the economy at the community level?

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