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Kasz216 on 31 August 2012
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Immortal said:
Kasz216 said:


Alright some interesting data here... haven't analayzed it's accuracy, as I wanted to go through this quickl so just the data.

I suppose the best to point out at the start  that...

The best country of the Nordic countries when it comes to Elasticity, and the only one better in a statistically significant way?   Denmark.  Which (un)coindentally happens to be the most "Free Market" of the Nordic Countries.   They have a huge social saftey net, but are pretty largely deregulated.

It's RIGHT below the US in the "Economic Freedom" index.

Denmark being an interesting country because of that, they're very buisness friendly, have a social saftey net, and have a pretty interchangeable workforce, so the average welfare recipient tends to receive benefits for less then one year, and most of the population actually expects to be laid off or be between jobs for a short period of time.

 

Though now the breakdowns your looking for... rounded to the nearest percent not evened out so the other way likely won't fully add up.

 

In the Lowest Quintile Fathers breakdown for son earnings? 

40%/25%/17%/10%/8%. 

Pretty bad... not really that awful though considering the problems listed above.  35% chance to not be poor.  Means a lot of people aren't following the above.

Second lowest?

20%/26%/20%/18%/16%

Over a 50% chance to not be poor if you started off in the secondary "poor" class

That's suddenly a whole hell of a lot better and pretty evenly distributed.

The Middle

18%/21%/25%/20%/16%

Hard to get more evenly distributed then this.

Lower Rich

14%/17%/21/23/25

A little less then a coinflip to stay rich.


Richest

9%/11%/15%/25%/25%.

When your the richest it seems somewhat hard to blow all that money, probably due to getting investments and such transfered over to you.   Still, 50% of the Children of the Richest people in the US, no longer are rich by the time they are adults.

 

 

So, everything seems pretty fine, except for that bottom quintile, which is largely due to the problems previously listed.

I know it's a bit stupid to ask this now, but what is the exact thing being measured here? Yearly income at the age of 18 or something to that effect? I'd need to know if I'm going to decide how useful it is here.

I'm actually rather impressed if this is a reliable statistic, though. I thought the situation was significantly worse in the US. At least for the top quintile. I expected way more than 25% to maintain their position.

The fact that Denmark is better than the other Scandinavian countries is interesting, as well. From how you describe it, it only seems to be half for the general right-wing economic argument, though. Unless I'm reading it wrong, the huge social safety net seems to be something that's actually aiding the way their system works.

Thanks for looking this up, by the way.


Seems to be.   Nobody in the US though is really going to be for "Greatly increase the saftey social net mostly by vastly increasing taxes on the middle class and poor."

 

Also worth noting by the way.... which isn't really mentioned... the US has a LOT more wealth then your average country... and way more super billionaires and such.   There are far fewer Bill Gates in Denmark then there are the US.    It's hard to lose Bill Gates money.

 

As for what it's measuring.   Basically Fathers earnings were measured in 1978, and compaired with their sons incomes between 1995-2001.

It's problematic that they only used Fatehrs and not household income, but, IRS numbers using household info come up with similar numbers, and are a bit more flattering towards US Economic mobility if I remember correctly.

They did a report with Daughters as well, but it's not as interesting... Daughters being pretty much all right by each other and waaaaay more mobile then sons... and actually absolutely fascinating.

Suggesting there is some social problem essentially with the boys of the poorest parents, espiecally those on welfare.

For example the lowest quintile for Daughters in the US, had their salary earnings work like this.

26/21/25/18/10

Second lowest


And very intrestingly, the richset women seem to have a huge chance for dropping.

22/12/13/22/31

Nearly 1/4th of rich women fall into the lowest level of poverty.  If your born in the highest quintile, you are MORE likely to be in the lowest level of poverty then if you were born poor, middle class or "Low rich"

 

Infact, daughters who end up extreme poverty go like this

26/17/16/19/22



If your born Rich and are a woman, you are MORE likely to be in the poorest quintile then if born somewhat poor or Middle class.    If I had to guess, I would say this is due to the Rich girls not being trained to follow in their fathers footsteps and being sheltered from the world.  

As for why the poorest women are so bad off?   I'd guess teen pregnancy honestly.  Outside that number, being poorer as a kid actually increases a womans chance of NOT being poor when they are adults.

Or did.  Honestly it's probably all just confounded due to the rise of women in the workplace.   Who knows what the numbers would be starting with women in the 90's.