Last week, Eduardo Porter of the New York Times wrote this column about how hard it is to become - or remain - middle class in this country. The article is illustrated by those graphs in the screenshot. One statistic Porter calls staggering is that "the typical household made $51,017, roughly the same as the typical household made a quarter of a century ago." Sure, according to the graph, the median household income had ticked up above that during the late 1990s and early 2000s, but the trend has been down again since the 2008 financial crisis. Equally, shocking, we still have approximately 15% of our population living below the poverty line, a number that has been increasing over the last five years.

The surface explanation is also in those charts: the richest quintile has increased its share of income to 49.9 percent of total income, from 42.1 percent starting back in 1967. According to this article, in terms of net worth, the top one percent owns 34.6% of the wealth, and the next 19% owns 50.5%. The bottom 80% owns 15% of the wealth. That makes the middle mighty small.

And that fact has had some repercussions. In 2012 Porter gathered some statistics about social well-being here.

It is not just that income inequality is the most acute of any industrialized country. More American children die before reaching age 19 than in any other rich country in the O.E.C.D. More live in poverty. Many more are obese. When they reach their teenage years, American girls are much more likely to become pregnant and have babies than teenagers anywhere else in the industrial world.

We understand the importance of early childhood development. Yet our public spending on early childhood is the most meager among advanced nations. We value education. Yet our rate of enrolling 3- to 5-year-olds in preschool programs is among the lowest among advanced nations. Our 15-year-olds place 26th out of 38 countries on international tests of mathematical literacy, according to the O.E.C.D. The first nation to understand the value of widespread college education, the United States has dropped from the top to the middle of the pack of our economically advanced peers in terms of college graduation rates.  

Porter has also gathered statistics about economic inequality here. We pay lower taxes than other industrialized nations, and we seem not to mind giving up government services as a result. 

The big exception has been the United States. In 1965, taxes collected by federal, state and municipal governments amounted to 24.7 percent of the nation’s output. In 2010, they amounted to 24.8 percent. Excluding Chile and Mexico, the United States raises less tax revenue, as a share of the economy, than every other industrial country.

A good illustration of the importance of early childhood education

If you haven't seen it already, Eduardo Porter's column in the New York Times yesterday morning, "Investments in Education May Be Misdirected" is worth reading. In it, Porter argues that the US is misdirecting its education spending by focusing so much on middle school, high school, and college students, and less on younger children. Porter reports:

Public spending on higher education is more than three times as large as spending on preschool, according to O.E.C.D. data from 2009. A study by [Julia] Isaacs found that in 2008 federal and state governments spent somewhat more than $10,000 per child in kindergarten through 12th grade. By contrast, 3- to 5-year-olds got less than $5,000 for their education and care. Children under 3 got $300.

Porter argues that this distribution of funding particularly hurts children from poor families, as they come to school unprepared to learn. Julia Isaacs' study found that:

more than half of poor 5-year-olds don't have the math, reading, or behavioral skills needed to profitably start kindergarten. If children keep arriving in school with these deficits, no amount of money or teacher evaluations may be enough to improve their lot later in life.

Porter provides a link to a presentation by James Heckman that is even more interesting. Heckman argues that the cost of making up for lack of skills is very high, and that early intervention can mean great improvements in cognitive and emotional abilities, as well as health. School reform, Heckman points out, will not solve this problem. Early intervention, on the other hand, gives the child a foundation that can be built on later.

What do you think? Please comment.

If you haven't seen it, read this excellent column by Eduardo Porter, "Charity's Role in America, and its Limits," in today's New York Times. He argues that, while philanthropy in the US is strong, it is not the solution to various social problems. Here's one sample:

In fact, a small portion of philanthropic efforts are aimed at helping those who most need it. A study by Rob Reich, a professor of sociology at Stanford University, concluded that only a small share of charity redistributes income from the wealthy to the poor. A big chunk of the $40 billion donated last year to educational nonprofits went for new buildings and new programs at someone’s alma mater. Donations to schools in affluent school zones tend to help their own children, not those on the other side of the tracks. 

How looking at outcomes can give you useful information

Here's another example showing how thinking about outcome measures, and using information available, can spark a larger discussion about priorities and solutions. In today's print and on-line New York Times, reporter Eduardo Porter writes, in an article titled "Numbers Tell of Failure in Drug War,"

If there is one number that embodies the seemingly intractable challenge imposed by the illegal drug trade on the relationship between the United States and Mexico, it is $177.26. That is the retail price, according to Drug Enforcement Administration data, of one gram of pure cocaine from your typical local pusher. That is 74 percent cheaper than it was 30 years ago. [Link in original.]

Porter goes on from there to discuss US and Mexican policies and identifies other numbers, such as the large numbers of people in US prisons, and how many are there for carrying small amounts of marijuana, and how much it costs. And there are uncountable numbers of people dead in Mexico. Porter uses the numbers to raise a number of possible policies the US could adopt. There are a lot of possible arguments among the alternatives, which Porter discusses. But one thing is clear: the decline in the street price of most drugs is a pretty good indicator - outcome measure - that the policies we have adopted are may not be working.