Tag Archives: United States

Trying to understand China’s economy with a lack of statistics

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Megan McArdle writes about the issue of a lack of comprehensive data to understand what is happening with China’s economy:

But central planners badly need good, comprehensive data.  Once you limit the autonomy of local nodes to make decisions, you need some sort of massive data set to overcome information loss as decisions move up the hierarchy.

Libertarians often use this to argue against any sort of central planning, but that’s not the point of this post.  All modern economies engage in some level of planning, whether it is monetary policy or infrastructure construction.  It was in response to the problems of managing production during World War I that economists first conspired to create US economic statistics.

The Chinese government is extremely enthusiastic about managing their economy, and they put a lot of thought into it.  But the lack of good statistics on economic performance makes an already near-impossible challenge even more daunting.

It is remarkable to recognize how much data there is out there these days in the United States. And even with all that data, it is often not always clear what should be done – government officials, investors, journalists, and citizens need to know how to interpret the data and figure out how to respond.

What would it take to get comprehensive data in China?

h/t Instapundit

39% of Americans now say marriage is obsolete

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More data suggests that definitions of family continue to change in the United States. According to research from Pew, about 39% of Americans now say marriage is obsolete:

About 29 percent of children under 18 now live with a parent or parents who are unwed or no longer married, a fivefold increase from 1960, according to the Pew report being released Thursday. Broken down further, about 15 percent have parents who are divorced or separated and 14 percent who were never married. Within those two groups, a sizable chunk — 6 percent — have parents who are live-in couples who opted to raise kids together without getting married.

Indeed, about 39 percent of Americans said marriage was becoming obsolete. And that sentiment follows U.S. census data released in September that showed marriages hit an all-time low of 52 percent for adults 18 and over.

In 1978, just 28 percent believed marriage was becoming obsolete.

What exactly people mean when they say marriage is “obsolete” is a little unclear: do they mean it is a dying institution? Do they mean that they won’t pursue marriage? Do they mean it is not a desirable goal?

But the same story also tries to suggest that it is not all bad news for marriage:

Still, the study indicates that marriage isn’t going to disappear anytime soon. Despite a growing view that marriage may not be necessary, 67 percent of Americans were upbeat about the future of marriage and family. That’s higher than their optimism for the nation’s educational system (50 percent), economy (46 percent) or its morals and ethics (41 percent).

And about half of all currently unmarried adults, 46 percent, say they want to get married. Among those unmarried who are living with a partner, the share rises to 64 percent.

The first set of comparisons of optimism about marriage and family versus other objects seems to be somewhat irrelevant. But there are still people who wish to be married – and I would be curious to know if there are traits or characteristics that mark this group.

What will be really interesting to see is how the current generation of kids, that 29% of kids under 18 who live with unwed or unmarried parents, responds to marriage when they are of age. There is nothing that says marriage rates have to decline over time just as there was never any guarantee that marriage would continue to be seen as a desirable life outcome for a majority of Americans.

As Christians, and Evangelicals in particular, have tended to promote “family values” and push the idea of marriage as a good for individuals, the church, and society, how will they respond to this data? Looking toward the future, will younger Evangelicals still desire marriage in the same way as previous generations or will the trends in broader society shape their behaviors?

The globalization of scientific research

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A recent report from the United Nations suggests that while the West (and the United States, in particular) still dominate scientific work, other countries are gaining ground. Here are some of the measures from the UNESCO report:

In 2007 Japan spent 3.4% of its GDP on R&D, America 2.7%, the European Union (EU) collectively 1.8% and China 1.4% (see chart 1). Many countries seeking to improve their global scientific standing want to increase these figures. China plans to push on to 2.5% and Barack Obama would like to nudge America up to 3%. The number of researchers has also grown everywhere. China is on the verge of overtaking both America and the EU in the quantity of its scientists. Each had roughly 1.5m researchers out of a global total of 7.2m in 2007…

One indicator of prowess is how much a country’s researchers publish. As an individual country, America still leads the world by some distance. Yet America’s share of world publications, at 28% in 2007, is slipping. In 2002 it was 31%. The EU’s collective share also fell, from 40% to 37%, whereas China’s has more than doubled to 10% and Brazil’s grew by 60%, from 1.7% of the world’s output to 2.7%…

UNESCO’s latest attempt to look at patents has therefore focused on the offices of America, Europe and Japan, as these are deemed of “high quality”. In these patent offices, America dominated, with 41.8% of the world’s patents in 2006, a share that had fallen only slightly over the previous our years. Japan had 27.9%, the EU 26.4%, South Korea 2.2% and China 0.5%.

Even though the United States still dominates a number of measures, UNESCO concluded Asia is the “dominant scientific continent in the coming years.”

A couple of things are interesting here:

1. Even if jobs have left the United States for cheaper locales, the US still has advantages in scientific research. How long this advantage holds up remains to be seen.

2. These are just three possible measures of scientific output. Other ones, such as journal citations, could be used but this seems fairly effective to quickly look at several measures.

3. It is interesting to think about how science itself will change based on increased research roles in non-Western nations.

h/t Instapundit

Exploring the messages embedded in “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”

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Political scientist Dominic Tierney explores the cultural and religious meanings and values behind the familiar American song “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Some of his thoughts on the song:

But most of all, the “Battle Hymn” is a warrior’s cry and a call to arms. Its vivid portrait of sacred violence captures how Americans fight wars, from the minié balls of the Civil War to the shock and awe of Iraq. Based on ideas from my new book, How We Fight: Crusades, Quagmires, and the American Way of War, we can see how the nation’s experience is intimately connected to this crusader’s cry…

The totemic poem has guided the United States through many military trials. The “Battle Hymn” epitomizes the strengths of this nation: its optimism, and its moral courage. It’s a song of agency, of action, a call to sacrifice together for the cause. The soldiers who march to the “Battle Hymn” have helped to liberate millions.

But there is a dark side to the “Battle Hymn” and the American way of war. The righteous zeal of America’s war effort can excuse almost any sins—like killing hundreds of thousands of enemy civilians. When Americans loose the fateful lightning, they have no moral guilt, for they are the tools of God.

This is a fascinating topic, particularly considering that the song came out of the Northern side of the Civil War but seems to have later been adopted by a majority of Americans. A song like this does reflect the American narrative, the story that we tell about ourselves over the years and also helps interpret our current situation.

And yet, I feel like I have rarely heard this song in recent years – the more common American hymn is “America, the Beautiful” which seems to adopt a very different tone, particularly in its first verse which opens with images of nature though its later verses pick up on some of the same themes. What explains a shift away from “The Battle Hymn,” if this has indeed happened? What happens or changes when “The Battle Hymn” is used in settings that have less to do with war – would other songs be preferred then or are there causes today that could or would utilize this song and its messages?

Mapping poverty rates by county across the US

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A story about the recently released figures regarding poverty in the United States includes a nice map from Mint.com that show poverty rates by county. The map shows higher rates of poverty in Louisiana, Mississippi, some parts of Texas and New Mexico, Appalachia, some of the middle parts of the southern Atlantic states, and some pockets in the upper Great Plains.

This map shows the proportion of residents who are living in poverty; while the national rate is now about 1 in 7 Americans is under the poverty line, 25% or more of residents in these locations live in poverty. Many of these counties are more rural counties. The map would look different if it were mapping the absolute number of people living in poverty – then you might see a shift toward some larger metropolitan areas.

While areas of concentrated poverty in the city get a lot of attention, what is going on in some of these more rural areas? How did poverty rates shift over the last couple of decades in these locations?

An academic conference to study elites

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“Elites” have been in the news lately and recently, Columbia University hosted a conference about elites. This is not as normal as one might think:

In the academic world, this was remarkable. As several of the scholars acknowledged, there has traditionally been some unease in talking about the elite, let alone researching them.

“When we study the poor, it’s relatively easy,” said Sudhir Venkatesh, a professor of sociology at Columbia and the author of “Gang Leader for a Day” (Penguin Press, 2008). “The poor don’t have the power to say no. Elites don’t grant us interviews. They don’t let us hang out at their country clubs.”

But Dorian Warren, an assistant professor of political science at Columbia, said the increasing concentration of wealth, moving from the top 10 percent of Americans to the top 1 percent, has made this the right time to look more closely at the group. “We have to understand what’s going on at the top,” Mr. Warren said.

This is an interesting topic: so why don’t academics study elites more? A few reasons (from what I know about sociology):

1. As noted above, elites can be hard to access.

2. Sociologists have often focused on deviants and the poor are often considered more outside society’s norms.

3. Could it be that many sociologists, with higher levels of education and decent incomes, might themselves be part of or are closer to the elite? If so, then there might be less interest in studying themselves or drawing attention to the class they participate in.

Americans walk less than other countries

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The Infrastructurist sums up some recent research that shows Americans walk less than residents of other countries. Explaining why this is the case is interesting:

The report’s lead author, David R. Bassett of the University of Tennessee, blames America’s poor performance on its auto obsession and lack of public transportation…

The researchers found no association between daily steps and living environment (e.g. urban, suburban, or rural)…

For the year 2009 alone, the top five walking commuter cities were Boston (14.1 percent commuted by foot), Washington (11.1), San Francisco (10.3), New York (10.3), and Philadelphia (8.7). The city with the lowest commuter walking share for the year was Fort Worth, at 1.2 percent. Freemark comments:

“As the chart shows, automobiles have a majority share in all cities except New York, Boston, Washington, and San Francisco. Unsurprisingly, these are dense cities and the places in the United States with the most complete transit systems.

These arguments make sense at face value: driving and setting would seem to play a large role. However, the first research study’s finding about driving may indicate that driving just trumps other factors for most Americans: whether Americans live in cities or suburbs or rural areas, driving is the preferred mode of transit.

Additionally, perhaps the number of people living in large cities with established and effective mass transit (the five top walking cities cited above) is simply not enough to counter all the drivers in other places.

Fighting “immappancy” by looking at the true size of Africa

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Many people have skewed perceptions of the world due to maps. Americans are used to seeing the United States (and North America) as the focal point of their maps; woe to those who put eastern Asia as the main point or even the Southern Hemisphere as the right way up! (What is interesting in these cases is that it reduces the United States to more of an afterthought. This doesn’t fit American cultural perceptions of our ) Another issue is one of size: because of the typically used projections, Greenland can vary from the largest mass in the world to a small mass. Relative sizes can be difficult to judge.

To combat “immappancy” (which apparently is a mash-up of illiteracy and innumeracy), here is a graphic that shows the size of Africa. Notice how large it is: the contiguous United States, China, all of Europe, and India all fit inside it. Yet how many people would know the true size of Africa?

Explaining a short-term dip in chronic homelessness

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A sociologist provides an explanation for the short-term dip in chronic homelessness in the United States:

Amid increases in poverty and unemployment, [the United States and Japan] have seen continuing decreases in street homelessness. The most recent Homeless Assessment Report to the U.S. Congress states that the chronically homeless, or those who have been on the streets or in shelters long-term and have disabilities, decreased by 10 percent from 2008 to 2009. The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has reported a national decrease of street homelessness of 16 percent between 2009 and 2010…
While the provision of subsidized housing is crucial to get people off the streets, a lesser-known component in both nations has been the flexible, holistic and trust-building work of frontline staff persons at organizations linking people to and keeping them in housing.
This argument suggests that it is not just about providing resources (such as housing) to help reduce chronic homelessness but having staff help point them to and keep them using such resources.
I wonder how much data there is to back up this argument. Additionally, do governments see/acknowledge the value of these staff positions, particularly in lean economic times?

Rebounding from the economic crisis in Dubai

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The economic crisis didn’t just affect American building or construction. The city that has grown out of the desert, Dubai, was also strongly affected and now is making a slow recovery:

Chastened after an extravagance-fueled debt crisis last year at Dubai World, the state-run investment giant, Dubai is getting back to basics.

Glamorous whimsies like a giant artificial island shaped like a palm tree are giving way to more pragmatic priorities meant to revive Dubai’s status as the dominant trading hub between the industrially advanced West and the oil-rich Middle East.

The article goes on to mention a number of factors that need to accompany building and development for it to last long-term including stable governance and a diversified economy.

One factor that is cited as aiding Dubai’s recovery is its established infrastructure.