US Teen Pregnancy, Birth and Abortion Rates since 1972 http://t.co/mwR1U6WJg8—
Max Roser (@MaxCRoser) August 06, 2015
US Teen Pregnancy, Birth and Abortion Rates
16 Aug 2015 Leave a comment
in economic history, gender, labour economics, labour supply, politics - USA, population economics, welfare reform Tags: abortion, economics of fertility, marriage and divorce, single mothers, single parents, teen pregnancy
@DandLMitchell Lindsey Mitchell on poverty
15 Aug 2015 Leave a comment
in labour economics, politics - New Zealand, poverty and inequality, welfare reform Tags: child poverty, family poverty, Lindsey Mitchell, welfare state
Another aspect of helicopter parenting
15 Aug 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of love and marriage, human capital, labour economics, law and economics, welfare reform Tags: child rearing, economics of families, marital division of labour, marriage and divorce
More time with mom has little to no effect on children's well-being: thesocietypages.org/socimages/2015… http://t.co/zyirz1QvQs—
(@SocImages) April 08, 2015
@metiria @NZGreens 20,000 drop in children in hardship in 2014
13 Aug 2015 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, economic history, income redistribution, labour economics, politics - New Zealand, poverty and inequality, Public Choice, welfare reform Tags: child poverty, family poverty, family tax credits, Leftover Left, New Zealand Greens, Twitter left
The material hardship measure shows a falling child material hardship rate using a threshold equivalent to the ‘standard’ EU level, down from a peak of 21% immediately after the GFC to 14% in 2014.
Using the more severe threshold, there was a slight rise through the GFC to 10% and a small fall to 8%, the level it was at before the GFC.
Source: Bryan Perry, Household Incomes in New Zealand: trends in indicators of inequality and hardship 1982 to 2014 – Ministry of Social Development, Wellington (August 2015), p. 133.
Source: Bryan Perry, Household Incomes in New Zealand: trends in indicators of inequality and hardship 1982 to 2014 – Ministry of Social Development, Wellington (August 2015), p. 133.
German unemployment incidence by duration since 1983
11 Aug 2015 Leave a comment
in economic history, Euro crisis, fiscal policy, job search and matching, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, unemployment, welfare reform Tags: equilibrium unemployment rate, Eurosclerosis, German unification, Germany, natural unemployment rate, poverty traps, unemployment duration, unemployment insurance, welfare state
German long term unemployment has been pretty stable albeit with an up-and-down after German unification. There is also a fall in long-term unemployment after some labour market reforms around 2005.
Source: OECD StatExtract.
This time it is different: unemployment incidence by duration, USA, 1968 – 2014
08 Aug 2015 1 Comment
in budget deficits, great recession, job search and matching, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, politics - USA, unemployment, welfare reform Tags: natural unemployment rate, taxation and labour supply, unemployment duration, unemployment insurance, unemployment rates, welfare state
The Great Recession was the first recession in the USA in a good 40 to 50 years where the composition of employment changed by much. Even the big recession at the beginning of the 1980s did not do much to the composition of unemployment by duration in the USA.
Source: OECD StatExtract.
Those unemployed for more than a year moved from barely double digits even in a bad recession prior to 2008 to coming on one-third of all unemployed. Likewise, those unemployed for less than a month halved from 40% to 20%. Something changed in the US labour market with the Great Recession and the long extensions of unemployment insurance from 26 weeks to 52 weeks and then 99 weeks.
The impact of welfare states on life expectancy
07 Aug 2015 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, fiscal policy, labour economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, poverty and inequality, welfare reform Tags: Denmark, Finland, life expectancies, Norway, Sweden, welfare state
New from @iealondon: Scandinavian success is not due to high taxes and welfare spending. iea.org.uk/in-the-media/p… http://t.co/QVH566KNtV—
IEA (@iealondon) July 07, 2015
Taxes on minimum wage earners across the OECD area
28 Jul 2015 Leave a comment
in labour economics, labour supply, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, welfare reform Tags: earned income tax credits, family tax credits, in-work tax credits, taxation and the labour supply
#MinimumWage shd be combined w/ #tax policies to help both workers & their employers; see bit.ly/1KfRNOB http://t.co/8klfJXmY4s—
(@OECD) July 25, 2015
Did the 1996 federal welfare reforms increase child poverty in America?
25 Jul 2015 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, economic history, labour economics, poverty and inequality, welfare reform Tags: 1996 U.S. welfare reforms, child poverty, family poverty
Number of black children in poverty may have eclipsed whites for the first time on record pewrsr.ch/1M7La40 http://t.co/wnb9sLo9Fv—
PewResearch FactTank (@FactTank) July 18, 2015
@Income_Equality there’s an Internet you know – was there next to no unemployment prior to the mid-1980s in New Zealand?
24 Jul 2015 Leave a comment
in business cycles, econometerics, economic growth, economic history, job search and matching, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice, unemployment, unions, welfare reform Tags: antimarket bias, Don Brash, economic reform, expressive voting, Homer Simpson, Leftover Left, lost decades, makework bias, neoliberalism, rational ignorance, rational irrationality, Sir Roger Douglas, Twitter left
Today, Closing The Gap – The Income Inequality Project boldly claimed today that there was next to no unemployment in New Zealand prior to the onset of the curse of neoliberalism.
There is an Internet on computers now where it is easy to find data showing that the unemployment rate was rising rapidly in New Zealand in the 1970s and in double digits by the end of the 1980s – see figure 1.
Figure 1: harmonised unemployment rates, Australia and New Zealand, 1956-2014
Source: OECD StatExtract.
Figure 1 shows unemployment was rising rapidly in the 1970s and wasn’t much different by the end of the 1970s to the unemployment rates recorded after about 2000 in New Zealand.
One of the reasons that Sir Roger Douglas wrote There’s Got To Be A Better Way was the rapidly rising unemployment in New Zealand and the stagnant economic growth in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
New Zealand was one of the most regulated economies, so much so that Prime Minister David Lange said:
We ended up being run very similarly to a Polish shipyard.
As for those jobs on the railways, the then Reserve Bank Governor Don Brash said in 1996:
Railways cut its freight rates by 50 percent in real terms between 1983 and 1990, reduced its staff by 60 percent, and made an operating profit in 1989/90, the first for six years.
More on unemployment: In 1955 the New Zealand’s prime minister knew all unemployed personally.
– Atkinson’s new book http://t.co/x37Vxya97C—
Max Roser (@MaxCRoser) July 24, 2015
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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