Inequality and Poverty

Feb 8, 2016

Top 400 Taxpayers See Tax Rates Rise, But There’s More to the Story

As Americans were gathering party supplies to greet the New Year, the Internal Revenue Service released their annual report of cumulative tax data reported on the 400 tax r...

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Feb 4, 2016

Chlorine Bleach Plants Needlessly Endanger 63 Million Americans

Chlorine bleach plants across the U.S. put millions of Americans in danger of a chlorine gas release, a substance so toxic it has been used as a chemical weapon. Greenpeace’s new repo...

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Jan 25, 2016

U.S. Industrial Facilities Reported Fewer Toxic Releases in 2014

The Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) data for 2014 is now available. The good news: total toxic releases by reporting facilities decreased by nearly six percent from 2013 levels. Howe...

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Jan 22, 2016

Methane Causes Climate Change. Here's How the President Plans to Cut Emissions by 40-45 Percent.

UPDATE (Jan. 22, 2016): Today, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released its proposed rule to reduce methane emissions...

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more news

Rising Unemployment Adds to Struggling Economy

When the Labor Department released its monthly unemployment and jobs data on Sept. 5, it reported that the unemployment rate for the month of August was 6.1 percent. The 0.4 percentage point increase over the prior month has pushed the unemployment rate to a five-year high and is the latest indication that the economy continues to deteriorate.

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Notes from the Economy: Jobs and Unemployment

Sep 5, 2008 by Craig Jennings

This morning's release of jobs and unemployment data continue the streak of unhappy economic data. In August, the unemployment rate jumped to 6.1 percent from July's 5.7 percent. The jobless rate has not been this high since Sept. 2003. Employers surveyed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that they had cut 84,000 jobs since July. However, the 17,000 jobs added governments hides the 101,000 job losses in the private job market. Since January, private employers have reduced payrolls by over 750,000 jobs.

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Forthcoming: EPI's The State of Working America, 2008/2009

Aug 29, 2008 by Craig Jennings

The Economic Policy Institute has released the advanced version of The State of Working America, 2008/2009; full version will be available Jan. 2009. Described as the "most comprehensive independent analysis of the U.S. labor market" by the Financial Times, the 11th edition shows that the business cycle that started in 2001 will be one for the record books....Prepared biennially since 1988, The State of Working America scrutinizes family incomes, jobs, wages, unemployment, wealth, poverty, and health care coverage, describing the economy's effect on our nation's standard of living.

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The Executive Pay Pie: Extra Large Slices and Topped with Tax Subsidies

Aug 29, 2008 by Craig Jennings

Staying with our current theme of taxes and corporate America, let me direct your attention toExecutive Excess 2008: How Average Taxpayers Subsidize Runaway Pay -- a report from Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy.

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Notes from the Economy: GDP, Jobless Claims

Aug 28, 2008 by Craig Jennings

GDPThe Bureau of Economic Analysis released its preliminary estimate of second quarter GDP growth. The BEA estimates that the economy grew at annualized rate of 3.3 percent in the second quarter. This estimate is a bit higher than the advance figure of 1.9 percent, which the BEA released a month ago. The final second quarter GDP number will be released on Sept. 26. In the first quarter of this year, real GDP grew at a 0.9 percent rate.

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Steven Pearlstein Wants to be Shown the Money

Aug 27, 2008 by Craig Jennings

(Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, "Average Income in 2006 Up $60,000 for Top 1 Percent of Households, Just $430 for Bottom 90 Percent") After a discussion about federal tax policy and income inequality, Steven Pearlstein strikes the right chord on where the discussion on inequality should be focused. As much as the distributional consequences of the tax code matter, there's still the nagging problem of pre-tax income inequality. Despite major advances in worker productivity over the past 40 years, workers have seen only a sliver of that economic gain.

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Annual Census Report on Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage Released

Aug 26, 2008 by Craig Jennings

You can read Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2007 here. Good news for income, not so great news for poverty, and mixed news for health insurance coverage. Here are a few highlights copy and pasted from the report: Income:

Real median household income increased 1.3 percent between 2006 and 2007, from $49,568 to $50,233 the third annual increase in real median household income.

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Gearing up for New Census Poverty Data

Aug 22, 2008 by Adam Hughes*

Today has been a slow day in an already slow month in fiscal policy in Washington, DC, but the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) issued a very helpful report leading up to the release of poverty, income, and health insurance data from the U.S. Census Bureau next Tuesday. The report is a guide to what to look for in the Census release and how to assess whether economic growth is reaching low- and middle-income families. CBPP thinks these data could show some pretty unprecedented trends:

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Notes from the Economy: Unemployment Insurance Claims

Aug 21, 2008 by Craig Jennings

The Department of Labor released its weekly unemployment insurance claims data this morning. Initial and continuing claims moved slightly downward, from 445,000 to 432,000 and from 3,379,000 to 3,362,000, respectively. The four-week moving average of initial claims, however, ticked up from 438,500 to 445,750.

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CHN Hosting Prep Webinar on Census Poverty Data Release

Aug 18, 2008 by Adam Hughes*

On Tuesday, August 19, the Coalition on Human Needs is once again hosting a webinar to help advocates and analysts prepare for the release of annual data from the Census Bureau about poverty, income, and health insurance in the U.S.

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