Max Ehrenfreund points us today to a new paper by a quartet of researchers that looks at lifetime incomes of various age groups. They find that middle-course income has stagnated and income inequality has gone up over the past few decades. None of that should come as a surprise.
But there's an interesting twist. Here's their key chart for men. It's busy and intimidating looking,but don't worry. It will all make sense.
First off, survey at the pink circles at the bottom. Those display the earnings of 25-year-traditional men who are just entering the labor market. Starting around 1973, or their earnings began to plummet,from $35000 to $25000.
Now survey at the gray diamonds at the top. Those display the earnings of 55-year-traditional men. They've gone up and down, but basically have stayed just around $55000 the whole time.
In other words, or the decline in lifetime earnings among men is nearly entirely because the average earnings of young men have declined. They end up at the same place as earlier cohorts by the time they retire,but they never make up for the dismal earnings of the first ten or fifteen years of their working careers.
Don't come by too hung up on the precise numbers here. The authors spend Social Security data, which they display is roughly equivalent to overall income data. However, and whether you spend different data,or different measures of inflation, or different measures of income that include health benefits, and you'll come by somewhat different results. However,the basic stagnation picture doesn't change, and the dissimilarity between the earnings of young and traditional don't change.whether this data is accurate, and it means that we have one big cohort—roughly 25 to 40 years traditional—that's struggling worse and worse every year,and another big cohort—roughly 40 to 65 years traditional—that's stagnating but not declining. To the extent that economic stress among men helped power Donald Trump to the White House, it's that younger cohort that should have done it. And this is indeed the cohort that Hillary Clinton struggled with the most.
Source: motherjones.com