Monthly Archives: May 2011

The decline of men in the American workforce

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The Economist examines some recent figures showing that men, particularly less-skilled workers, have lower levels of participation in the labor force:

The decline of the working American man has been most marked among the less educated and blacks. If you adjust official data to include men in prison or the armed forces (who are left out of the raw numbers), around 35% of 25- to 54-year-old men with no high-school diploma have no job, up from around 10% in the 1960s. Of those who finished high school but did not go to college, the fraction without work has climbed from below 5% in the 1960s to almost 25% (see chart 2). Among blacks, more than 30% overall and almost 70% of high-school dropouts have no job…

The main reason why fewer men are working is that sweeping structural changes in rich economies have reduced the demand for all less-skilled workers. Manufacturing has declined as a share of GDP, and productivity growth has enabled factories to produce more with fewer people. Technological advances require higher skills. For the low-skilled, low demand has meant lower wages, both relative and absolute. This in turn reduces the incentive to find a job, especially if disability payments or a working spouse provide an income.

Men have been hit harder than women by these shifts. They are likelier to work in manufacturing; women have been better represented in sectors, such as health care and education, where most job growth has taken place. Women have also done more than men to improve their academic credentials: in most rich countries they are likelier than men to go to university.

There is a lot to think about here. One reason that the article cites for this trend is the numbers of women (compared to men) who are getting college degrees. This has been noted by others (with some interesting data from the White House here) and it really does seem to be a sizable shift in American society.

A few other questions come to mind:

1. Could politicians promote policies that specifically target less-skilled male workers?

2. What are some of the broader consequences of this trend, such as the impact on community life or family life?

3. How could schools, particularly high schools and colleges, tackle this issue?

At least some builders says McMansion may not be dead yet

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Amidst suggestions that McMansions are being “shunned,” McMansions should be subdivided, and homebuyers want denser, walkable communities, at least some builders suggests McMansions may not be dead yet:

Wilson said builders are taking the slow approach toward embracing the younger generation of buyers, who are buying homes and starting families later in life.

“Most builders are still in recovery mode and remain cautious with any revolutionary concepts,” he said. “The one consistent thread is that the buyer continues to shop hard.

“Housing is in a recovery mode, but the consumer is still looking for the best deal he can find.”

Baby boomers set the tone for housing in recent decades, but their influence is starting to wane, Wilson said.

“This is not to say that the McMansion is dead – far from it,” he said, “just that the following generation – the Gen X group – is not as large as the preceding group.”

And most of the millennial or 20-something buyers aren’t yet ready to commit to home ownership – particularly after the decline in values they have witnessed in many areas of the country.

“I’ve heard that some of the new homes in California are getting a lot smaller, but I don’t see how that works around here,” said Jimmy Brownlee, Dallas-Fort Worth regional president for K. Hovnanian Homes. “Our buyers aren’t asking for that. We are trying to open our houses up and give them more light.”

This builder and others (described as “stumped builders” in the headline) sound like they are waiting to see what will happen in the housing market in the near future. Several factors are at play: the state of the economy and the housing industry, regional differences (Dallas vs. California), and generational differences as the Baby Boomers transition to retirement and younger buyers are more skittish.

From this article alone, it sounds like regional differences could play a big role. In places like Kansas City and Texas, house prices never got out of hand in the same way as California, Las Vegas, Florida, and Arizona. Therefore, continuing to build somewhat bigger homes might not be such a stretch, even in a tough housing market.

Also of note in this article is the suggestion that the homes may still be fairly big but they not have all the amenities like granite countertops or a deluxe bathtub. I’ve suggested before that smaller homes may not necessarily be cheaper, possibly due to more upscale furnishings or due to a more desirable urban/denser location.

11,000 square foot NYC homes designed by a noted architect qualify as McMansions?

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Villanova Heights is a newer residential development in the Bronx, New York City. Despite being designed by noted architect Robert A.M Stern, Curbed NY says even the smallest homes in the development are McMansions:

We’ve occasionally mentioned Villanova Heights, the McMansion community in Riverdale designed by Robert A.M. Stern. And by McMansions, we mean houses that aren’t only huge in comparison to Manhattan apartments—the smallest Bobby A.M. creations in Villanova Heights are around 11,000 square feet. The rents are similarly hefty, with the first two completed homes in the development renting for $13,000 and $16,000 per month. Now we’re finally getting a peek inside one of these things, with the new listing for 5020 Iselin Avenue, an 11,000-square-footer on a 25,000-square-foot lot that contains a heated swimming pool and cabana. In fact, we’d be amazed if there were anything this house didn’t contain. When it comes to Riverdale, though, this one’s still our favorite.

Two things strike me here:

1. The homes are at least 11,000 square feet. This is more like a mansion, not just a McMansion. Percentage-wise, very few American homes are that large. When people typically refer to suburban McMansions, they are thinking of homes that are 3,500 to 5,000 square feet.

2. The neighborhood is designed by a noted architect and yet the houses are still called McMansions. One major criticism of McMansion is that they lack tasteful design or more authentic materials. So is this more of a criticism of Stern’s home designs than anything else? Stern is a noted architect but designs McMansions?

This is how the Villanova Heights website describes the home design philosophy:

In developing Villanova Heights, Robert A.M. Stern Architects has adhered to its philosophy that the residences designed “do not, by their very being, threaten the esthetic and cultural values of the buildings around them.” Further, that no one style “is appropriate to every building and every place.” Finally, consistent with Robert A.M. Stern’s belief in the continuity of tradition, his firm’s work on Villanova Heights is driven “by entering into a dialogue with the past and with the spirit of the places in which we build.”

Does this sound like a description of a McMansion?

Study of over 5,000 children’s books from 20th century shows gender bias

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A team of sociologists looked at “nearly 6,000” of children’s books from the 20th century and found that there were patterns of gender bias throughout the entire period:

“We looked at a full century of children’s books,” McCabe said. “We were surprised to find that books did not become consistently more equal throughout the century. They were most unequal in the middle of the century, with more male-dominated characters from 1930 to 1969, than those published in the first three decades of the century and in later decades.”…

The study, “Gender in Twentieth–Century Children’s Books: Patterns of Disparity in Titles and Central Characters,” was published in the journal Gender & Society. The study found that:

•Males are central characters in 57 percent of children’s books published per year, while only 31 percent have female central characters.
•No more than 33 percent of children’s books published in any given year contain central characters that are adult women or female animals, but adult men and male animals appear in up to 100 percent of books.
•Male animals are central characters in more than 23 percent of books per year, while female animals are in only 7.5 percent.
•On average, 36.5 percent of books in each year studied include a male in the title, compared to 17.5 percent that include a female.
•Although books published in the 1990s came close to parity for human characters, a significant disparity of nearly 2 to 1 remains for male animal characters versus female.

This may not seem terribly important in the grand scheme of the world but at the same time, children’s books can play an important role in the socialization process. I would be interested to see how the authors discuss the changing role of children’s book with the advent of mass publishing, television, movies/DVDs, etc. And is there any way to assess the impact of such texts on children who read them?

Just off the top of my head, I’m struck by the number of children’s books examined. Over a 100 year stretch, this would average out of 60 per year but this seems like an unusually large qualitative data set.

Finding Bin Laden in the suburbs

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There has been a lot of commentary about where Osama Bin Laden was found in Pakistan. On one hand, there has been a lot of interest in his house, including people dubbing the compound a “McMansion.” (However, reports yesterday and today have suggested that the house was less unusual or prominent as was first suggested.) On the other hand, he was found in an unusual military town. Here is one take that suggests that Bin Laden was found in the unlikeliest of places: a suburb.

We now all know that, of course, bin Laden was not in a cave. He was hiding in plain sight in a million-dollar mansion in a posh suburb of Islamabad.

Not only that, the suburb was a military complex described as Pakistan’s West Point. And the mansion apparently was built expressly for him – as though he were some chief executive officer cashing in on his bonus options, so he wasn’t being especially discreet.

He apparently had been living there undisturbed for six years, according to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). He was a suburbanite enjoying the pleasures of a life of leisure – behind 12-foot walls.

This was so far beyond our expectation of how the world’s most wanted terrorist would be living that no one, apparently, bothered to look for him outside the mountains. Terrorists just don’t live in the suburbs.

I’m not so sure this community was a suburb. It was at least an hour outside of Islamabad. It was also a military community, not necessary a resort community. However, there have been reports that a number of wealthier military officials live in this community. And Bin Laden was living a life of leisure when he was possibly in the same room for five years? Bin Laden is comparable to a CEO “cashing in on his bonus options”? In terms of thinking that this community is like a typical American suburb outside of Los Angeles or Chicago and Bin Laden was the typical suburban head of household, this is not quite the case.

The story goes on to cite the sociological idea of “lifestyle enclaves”:

Back in 1985, the sociologist Robert Bellah and his cohort, in their seminal book “Habits of the Mind,” coined the term “lifestyle enclaves” to describe the way Americans had begun to cluster on the basis of “shared patterns of appearance, consumption and leisure activities, which often serve to differentiate them sharply from those with other lifestyles.”

These enclaves were self-selected – you gravitated toward others like you. In the sociologists’ view, they were increasingly replacing real community in America with these superficial bonds of similarity.

There are dozens of these enclaves today – from members of the National Rifle Association, to upwardly mobile young married couples, to outdoorsmen, to the very wealthy. Enclaves have become a primary way we define ourselves.

But I doubt that Bellah and the others ever thought of terrorists as a possible enclave back when they were writing the book. Yet the concept of people who choose to live with others who look like them and think like them is now so deeply embedded in our consciousness that the idea of a terrorist enclave apparently did cross the mind of the intelligence community today.

The conclusion of the piece is that Bin Laden was found because he didn’t play by the “lifestyle enclave”/suburban rules. So all of the residents of Abbotabad were terrorists?

All of this seems like a stretch in order to connect to the average American suburban reader. The basic premise could be interesting: the suburbs (or more rural/military town suburbs) are supposed to be the land of safety, not the place where terrorists (or any people who commit violent crimes) actually live next door. But to suggest that Bin Laden was similar to a typical suburbanite and was caught because he didn’t fit in seems kind of silly. Projecting the image of the American suburbs on Abbotabad, Pakistan may not be the best way to understand a complex situation.

Chicago’s Fifth Avenue an example of late 1800s growth machine

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Chicago has its own Fifth Avenue but it is the only numbered avenue in the city. Here’s why:

When what is now the East Garfield Park neighborhood became part of the city in 1869, much of the West Side was open prairie.

According to Streetwise Chicago: A History of Chicago Street Names (Loyola University Press, 1988), the street, originally called Colorado Avenue, was renamed in an effort to boost residential and commercial development.

The new name was meant to evoke the prestige of New York’s flashiest shopping strip—a far cry from the modest bungalows, brownstones and warehouses that have come to define the area…

Peter T. Alter, an archivist at the Chicago History Museum, says the name switch happened around 1890, near the time Chicago beat out New York for the right to host the World’s Columbian Exposition fair.

“Perhaps,” Alter notes, “that lessened the idea of Chicago being seen as second to New York City.”

This is a great illustration of a growth machine at work: in order to boost development in what was an undeveloped area, the street name was changed in order to invoke the wealthy street in New York City. Additionally, the name change seems tied to the 1893 Columbian Exposition (see here for a review of The Devil in the White City which describes some of this time period), an important moment in Chicago’s early history that established the booming city as a world-class city. It sounds like boosterism all around.

First Dairy Queen to be celebrated in Joliet

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Americans are well-known for their fast-food culture that has since spread around the world. Joliet, now the fourth largest city in Illinois, will honor the nation’s first Dairy Queen:

Joliet will celebrate its heritage as the home of the first Dairy Queen as  part of the Route 66 Red Carpet Corridor Festival on Saturday,

The Joliet Area Historic Museum will be open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and feature displays of Dairy Queen memorabilia, photos and original product sample packages. Visitors will get a Dairy Queen Dilly Bar.

The first Dairy Queen opened June 22, 1940 at 501 N. Chicago St., now the site of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God. Sheb Noble opened the store and sold soft-serve ice cream cones for 5 cents.

The Dairy Queen closed in the early 1950s, and over the years the building has housed a lawn-mower repair business, furniture store, motorcycle shop and plumbers.

I wish this article had more information about the growth of Dairy Queen: how did it go from this one location to “more than 5,700 locations operating throughout the United States, Canada and 22 other countries“? According to Dairy Queen’s website, the growth happened quickly:

Back then, food franchising was all but unheard of, but the new product’s potential made it a natural for such a system. When the United States entered World War II in December 1941, there were less than 10 Dairy Queen stores. However shortly after the war, the system took off at a pace virtually unrivaled before or since. With only 100 stores in 1947, it grew to 1,446 in 1950 and then to 2,600 in 1955.

It sounds like they found a particular market niche, soft-serve ice cream,  and really capitalized even before other iconic fast-food restaurants, like McDonald’s (whose first franchised restaurant, the ninth overall, opened in Des Plaines, IL in 1955), really took off.

I’m not sure there is any other fast-food place that can compete with the Blizzard (sorry McFlurrys). And I’ve had my fair share.

The decline of the church steeple

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USA Today reports that the church steeple, once a key feature of church architecture, is on the decline:

Nationwide, church steeples are taking a beating and the bell tolls for bell towers, too, as these landmarks of faith on the landscape are hard hit by economic, social and religious change…

Architects and church planners see today’s new congregations meet in retooled sports arenas or shopping malls or modern buildings designed to appeal to contemporary believers turned off by the look of old-time religion.

Steeples may have outlived their times as signposts. People hunting for a church don’t scan the horizon, they search the Internet. Google reports searches for “churches” soar before Easter each year…

Today, he says, people want their church to look comfortable and inviting, “more like a mall.”

The article has some interesting points:

1. Churches look more inviting without a steeple. This is interesting as it suggests that a primary goal of church architecture is that people feel comfortable and avoid symbolic references to “old-time religion.” Several times in this story, the comparison is made to shopping malls: newer churches want to be inviting. I’m not sure that I particularly find shopping malls inviting – they are quite functional in what they intend to do, that is, generate profit – but I can see how they have more relaxed atmospheres. But should this be the major goal of church architecture?

2. Beside this cultural issue, this appears to be a budget issue for many churches as steeples cost money to build and maintain. These sorts of “frills” might be difficult to support in tough economic times. I like the example in the story of churches leasing out this space to cell phone companies: this is American pragmatism.

3. The idea that it was once important for people walking around a community to be able to see a steeple from a long distance is intriguing. What marks the skyline of a typical suburb or American small town today? (And let us be honest: how much can you see from a car, as opposed to walking, anyway? Perhaps this is why we have church signs that look more like signs for fast food restaurants or strip mall businesses. Are these more inviting as well?)

4. If the steeple is no longer a distinctive architectural feature of churches, what does mark these buildings from other typical buildings? Anything beyond a sign out front? But as the article suggests, perhaps this is the point.

Proposal for government to study driving tax by mile

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I’ve occasionally written about the gas tax (see here and here for recent examples) as well alternative forms of deriving tax revenue from driving (see here). There is a report that the Obama administration has proposed a new federal study that would look at taxing drivers per mile driven:

The Obama administration has floated a transportation authorization bill that would require the study and implementation of a plan to tax automobile drivers based on how many miles they drive…

Among other things, CBO suggested that a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax could be tracked by installing electronic equipment on each car to determine how many miles were driven; payment could take place electronically at filling stations.

The CBO report was requested by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND), who has proposed taxing cars by the mile as a way to increase federal highway revenues…

The administration seems to be aware of the need to prepare the public for what would likely be a controversial change to the way highway funds are collected. For example, the office is called on to serve a public relations function, as the draft says it should “increase public awareness regarding the need for an alternative funding source for surface transportation programs and provide information on possible approaches.”

I have several quick thoughts about this:

1. Doesn’t the government have to go to some method like this in the future with the advent of electric cars? If people are buying less gasoline (which is generally thought of as a good thing), then gas tax revenue will decrease.

2. If a tax like this were implemented, does this deincentivize purchasing electric cars or more fuel-efficient vehicles? Although you might pay less at the pump for gas, you would then pay more for driving longer distances.

3. How much of this is going to turn into a public relations battle? It is interesting that the proposed study would look into this. I’m sure a few things would worry some people:

a. How is the government going to use this tracking information since they will already be tracking the miles driven? Of course, this is potentially already an issue in states with toll transponders like Illinois and the IPass system

b. Is this a tax on mobility or on the American way of life (i.e. sprawl)? It would be interesting to see how this new tax might compare to existing costs for driving. Overall, this article reminds me that driving is not cheap – it may feel like freedom but it is expensive freedom.

4. Is a tax for miles-driven too broad? Different vehicle sizes put different stress on road surfaces. Should a tax also take this into account? Or is the difference between a Honda Insight and a Honda Pilot not significant?

5. There could be some interesting consequences of this. Would there be fewer road trips and driving vacations? Would the airline industry (and the rail/high speed rail industry) benefit? Would putting the costs into miles driven rather than tacked onto a gallon of gasoline make people think twice about purchasing a home further from their work?

More appealing measurements of the American economy

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The Economist looks at several ways in which the US federal government calculates certain economic statistics that might make our economic situation look most appealing. Here is their conclusion:

Conspiracy theorists might conclude that the American government is trying to nip and tuck its way to attractiveness. The persistent downward revisions to GDP growth do look suspicious. But in other areas American number-crunchers seem to believe that their measures are better; indeed, history shows that European statistical agencies have often later adopted their methods. The world’s biggest economy is also much less bothered about the international comparability of its numbers than smaller European countries. True, when the statisticians at the IMF or the OECD produce comparative data, they do so on the basis of standardised definitions. The snag comes if investors fail to grasp that official national figures can show the American economy in an overly flattering light.

Complex numbers, such as these, can be difficult to operationalize or calculate but they also need to be interpreted. Economic experts may know about these methodological differences and can account for these but I’m guessing that the average citizen of the US or European countries has less of an idea about what is going on.

Another US figure that has recently attracted methodological attention is unemployment. While the US unemployment rate has undoubtedly risen in the economic crisis of recent years, it has its own quirks. One part that has been discussed in that people have to be actively looking for work in the last 4 weeks and once people move beyond that cut-off point, they are no longer counted as being unemployed. Another area involves those who work less than full-time but want full-time work and could be classified as “underemployed.” (You can see how the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculates unemployment here.)

(It is also interesting in this story that they compare the calculation of these statistics to cosmetic surgery, apparently an important marker of American culture.)