We examine the economic well-being of the elderly, using the Levy Institute Measure of EconomicWell-Being (LIMEW). The LIMEW is a comprehensive measure that incorporates broader definitions of income, from wealth, government expenditures, and taxes, than standard income and also includes the...

I find here that the early and mid 2000s (2001 to 2007) witnessed both exploding debt and a consequent middle class squeeze. Median wealth grew briskly in the late 1990s and even faster in the 2000s. The inequality of net worth was up slightly during the 2000s. Indebtedness, which fell...

Defined contribution plans were supposed to revitalize private pensions and guarantee a comfortable retirement for many more Americans. But it has not turned out that way. This expert summarizes the disappointing state of affairs. Is anyone listening?

Assets in the United States are distributed even more unequally than income, though they can be vital to an individual's standard of living. The authors present a comprehensive assessment of the distribution of assets in the United States and calculate an asset poverty line below which an...

Using data from the decennial US Censuses of 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000, I construct matrices of employment by 267 occupations and 64 industries and then aggregate the occupations into four categories: (i) knowledge producers; (ii) data processors; (iii) service workers; and (iv)...

Using US input-output data for the period 1958-87, I find strong evidence that industry total factor productivity (TFP) growth is significantly related to the TFP performance of the supplying sectors, with an elasticity of almost 60%. R&D intensity is also found to be a significant determinant...

American prosperity in the second half of the 1980s together with the booming economy of the 1990s created the impression that American households have done well, particularly in terms of wealth acquisition. In this paper, we develop the concept of “asset poverty” as a measure of economic...