Robert E. Baldwin 1924-2011

He was my dissertation advisor.  From his obituary:

Baldwin was also an "academic father" to scores of students, inspiring them with his quiet but deeply held passion for combining academic rigor with real-world applicability. Many of his students have become professors in universities across the world. His vocation is also carried on by his son, Richard, and son-in-law, Gene Grossman, both of whom are professors of economics specialising in international trade.

I was very fortunate to be among those scores.   

A coincidence?

In 1959, the poverty rate among the elderly was 37.1 percent, or more than double the rate for all adults.  By 1969, it has dropped to 27.1 percent and by 1979 to 12.7 percent.  By 1999 it was 7 percent, or lower than the adult poverty rate.  Medicare, of course, came into being in the 1965.  

Rhonda Porter points out that a government shutdown would stop the mortgage underwriting process.

Lenders will not be able to order 4506Ts--tax transacripts--from the IRS.  This is the principal source of income verification.  Without it, lenders will not be able to underwrite borrowers.

 

Now for Metro Areas (which are harder to define)

The ten largest MSAs in 1960 (SMSA for everything except Chicago and New York, which are CMSAs) with current rank in parentheses.

1. New York (1)
2. Chicago (3)
3. Los Angeles (within a whisker of Chicago) (2)
4. Philadelphia (5)
5. Detroit (11)
6. San Francisco (13)
7. Boston (10)
8. Pittsburgh (!!)  (22)
9. St. Louis (18)
10. Washington (8)

San Francisco is just San Francisco-Oakland--if one added San Jose it would be in the same position in 1960 and further up the ranks now.  I forgot that Pittsburgh was once a top ten MSA.  There is obvously a lot more persistence here.

50 years of Population in in Ten Largest Municipalities in the US

Just for grins, I looked to see how the ten largest cities around the time I was born have changed in terms of rank.  The top ten in 1960 and their current rank:

1. New York (still # 1)
2. Chicago (now 3)
3. Los Angeles (now 2)
4. Philadelphia (now 5)
5. Detroit (now 18)
6. Baltimore (now 21)
7. Houston (now 4)
8. Cleveland (now 45)
9. Washington, DC (now 24)
10. St. Louis (now 58!)

New York is a bit larger now, and has for more than 50 years been more than twice as large as the second largest city, making the spirit of George Zipf happy. LA and Houston have gained population as well as rank; the other seven all lost.  St. Louis is hemmed in by a boundary that was drawn more than a century ago, but it doesn't lack land--the area north of downtown is basically field and forest.  Cleveland, Baltimore and, of course, Detroit have lots of empty space within their boundaries as well.

For symmetry, let's look at where the current top ten were in 1960.

1. New York (1)
2. Los Angeles (3)
3. Chicago (2)
4. Houston (7)
5. Philadelphia (5) (note: the top 5 were all in the top 7 in 1960).
6. Phoenix (29)
7. San Antonio (17)
8. San Diego (18)
9. Dallas (13)
10. San Jose (57)

The cities in the second five moved pretty dramatically.  They all had lots of available land in 1960 and are all, of course, sunbelt (although I suppose on could argue that northern California is not sunbelt).  

Note: All data come from 2010 Census and http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/tab19.txt.

  

Ryan Avent doesn't believe 2.8 percent unemployment is a reasonable possibility

Ryan Avent on the assumptions underlying the Ryan plan:


http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/04/facts_and_figures

A couple of other points: Ryan seems to think that the two basic problems facing the country are: (1) too many defined benefits and (2) too much equality.

Dalton Conley Talks about Intergenerational Wealth--and it is not pretty

Dalton gave a very nice talk at USC on Friday, presenting his Center for American Progress paper 

Wealth Mobility and Volatility in Black and White.  The CAP page on the paper summarizes the findings:

• What family an individual comes from ƒƒexplains about three-quarters of where they end up in the wealth distribution as adults. For African Americans, however, the impact of family background is substantially lower, at 37 percent.
• Individuals are more likely to mainƒƒtain wealth than to attain wealth, or more precisely, low-wealth children are unlikely to become high-wealth adults, while high-wealth children are very likely to be high-wealth adults. Looking at previous years’ data, less than 10 percent of children who grew up in families in the bottom wealth quartile, which had a maximal cut off of about $8,000 in 1984, reached high wealth levels by adulthood between 1999 and 2003 (when the top group’s minimal value was $82,501and the median was over $189,000). And over 55 percent of children who grew up in families in the top wealth quartile—over $155,000 of net worth back in 1984—held on to their high wealth levels by adulthood.
• The strongest predictor of an adult’s ƒƒrelative wealth status is his or her income, which in turn is highly predicated on his or her parents’ income and wealth.
• Wealthy white children are much more ƒƒlikely to become wealthy adults than wealthy African-American children: Over 55 percent of all white children raised by parents in the top wealth quartile hold onto the top wealth position as adults. This is contrasted to only the 37 percent of African-American children raised by parents in the top wealth quartile who hold onto the top wealth position as adults.