Graph and link bonanza

Notable things from across the econ blogosphere:

1. Share of women in the Olympics roster:

2. Mapping the world's couch potatoes:

They found that 31% of adults do not get enough physical activity—defined as 30 minutes of moderate exercise five days a week, or 20 minutes of vigorous exercise three days a week, or some combination of the two. Women tend to get less exercise—34% are inactive, compared with 28% of men—but there are exceptions.... These figures are worrying. According to another paper in the Lancet, insufficient activity has about the same effect on life expectancy as smoking.

3. Computing and robotics stats (see link for the graphs).

4. The new economics of privacy (from Digitopoly):

“It has become cheap and easy to pry into the lives of others at the same time that protecting our own lives has become time-consuming and expensive. A look at two companies — one that sells your data and another that protects it — shows the business and policy lessons of this new reality.”

5. What are the "high-touch" professions?

There are two broad shifts that account for much of this decline: globalization and computerization. From T-shirts to toys, manufacturing jobs have migrated to low-wage countries like Vietnam, Bangladesh, and of course China. Meanwhile, many of the tasks that might have been done by middle-income Americans employed as bookkeepers or middle managers have been replaced by spreadsheets and data algorithms.

6. Cellphones as the single most effective tool for socioeconomic empowerment:

An amazing story of how a new technology has revolutionized the world and empowered individuals and transformed lives, especially in the developing countries. The simple cell phone has probably done more to reduce poverty globally and promote economic growth around the planet than all of the efforts of the World Bank.

7. A proxy for measuring "uncertainty":

 

8. The Gender Inequality Index (GII):

9. The latest on the debate about income tax progressivity:

Greg Mankiw: "That is, the middle class, having long been a net contributor to the funding of government, is now a net recipient of government largess.... I recognize that part of this change is attributable to temporary measures to deal with the deep recession. But it is noteworthy nonetheless, as other deep recessions, such as that in 1982, did not produce a similar policy response." 

Gary Becker: "I conclude that even with considerable uncertainty about how much higher taxes on higher-income individuals would reduce their work effort and their investments, the expected gain from raising these taxes is likely to be negative. The trend toward lower marginal tax rates during the past 50 years was perhaps mainly the result of interest group pressure from higher income individuals, but it also receives support from a benefit-cost analysis of the expected effects of tax increases on behavior."

10. Inequality and family structure (from Economix; this deserves a separate post soon):

An interesting pattern over the last four decades is that inequality has grown much faster for households with children than it has for households over all — an indication that changes in family structure (as opposed to wages and employment alone) have increased inequality.

 

The article shows how single parenthood has grown in the middle income third. The data, from Mr. Western and Ms. Shollenberger, can also be analyzed by fourths, as it is below.  

While the decline of two-parent families is most striking in the bottom quarter, that is a familiar story and had largely occurred by 1990. Much of the recent growth has occurred in the second-lowest quarter, sometimes called the working class. In that group, the share of households with children headed by unmarried parents has soared to nearly 40 percent and the growth has continued in recent years.... 

Changes in family structure may explain anywhere from 15 to 40 percent of the increased inequality in recent decades. Readers may wonder why there is such a broad range of estimates. It depends on the time period examined, the income rungs examined, and assumptions about how much the absent parent might have brought into the household. 

There is a lot of research showing that single parenthood puts children at a higher risk of experiencing poverty. But there is not much that examines its long-term effects on a child’s chances of moving up the income ladder.