Month: January 2021

There are two things that \”everyone knows\” about the US middle class: it\’s shrinking in size and the government isn\’t helping. However, when one digs into the data, the evidence for these claims and some implications of that evidence are considerably more nuanced. 

Here, I draw upon a collection of essays called Securing Our Economic Future, edited by Melissa S. Kearney and Amy Ganz, and published by the Aspen Institute Economic Strategy Group late last year. In h first essay, Bruce Sacerdote asks, \”Is the Decline of the Middle Class Greatly Exaggerated?\” In the second essay, Adam Looney, Jeff Larrimore, David Splinter look at \”Middle-Class Redistribution: Tax and Transfer Policy for Most Americans.\”

For a flavor of Sacerdote\’s argument, define the middle class as those with between 75% and 200% of the median income. Then over time, the share of household incomes going to this group does decline. However, a closer look shows that the reason for the decline in the share of household incomes in the \”middle class\” category is not because the share in the below-75-percent-of-median group has rise, but rather because the share going to the above-200-percent-of-median group has risen.

In an arithmetic sense, this is a decline of the middle class. But it is not a shift to a bimodal or two-humped income distribution with both poor and rich rising. Instead, the middle class still has the largest share of income overall and is declining only because more households are moving up to the higher category.

To think about this shift, imagine a \”society\” in Scenario A with 100 people: 35 poor people, 51 middle-income people, and 14 rich people. Compare this with Scenario B, which has 35 poor people, 43 middle class people, and 22 rich people. (The numbers here are chosen to match Sacerdote\’s chart.) In other words, the change here is that eight of middle-income people move up to the \”rich\” category, and let\’s hypothesize that no one else is affected negatively.

Is society better off in Scenario A or B? For the purposes of this exercise, it\’s not fair to invent Scenarios C, D, or E: yes, we might make a case that more broad-based growth, or movement from the poor to the middle-class, would be preferable. But the question here is how to think about the actual shift that happened. In the shift from A to B, the size of the middle class has declined and inequality has risen. However, a standard argument for social welfare comparisons makes the plausible claim that if comparing two scenarios where at least some people are better off, and no one is worse off, then social welfare as a whole has improved

For those who hesitate before accepting this conclusion, consider running this argument in reverse: Say that you start in Scenario B, but then eight people moves from the \”rich\” to the \”middle-class\” category in Scenario A. In this situation, the share of those in the middle class has risen, and inequality has diminished. But it would seem perverse to argue that a society where some people have become worse-off (again assuming no effect on others) is a preferable outcome. Or to put it another way, one has to argue that income equality has such a high value that it is worth \”levelling down\” incomes so that some people are worse-off, even if there is no direct benefit to others from doing so. As Sacerdote writes: \”[T]he astounding growth at the top of the distribution need not be making the middle class worse off in absolute terms.\”

Sacerdote also refers back to the findings of an OECD study in 2019, which argued that \”middle class\” is associated in people\’s minds with certain kinds of consumption: in particular, it\’s associated with a certain level of housing, with relatively easy access to health insurance and health care, and with access to higher education. In the US and around the world, prices for housing, health care, and higher education have risen faster than average incomes. As he points out, one can \”ask whether homeownership or college attendance for children in the family has risen or fallen for people in the middle quintiles of the income distribution. I find that since the 1980s, homeownership, square footage of housing consumed, number of automobiles owned, and college attendance have all been rising. The one exception is the modest dip in homeownership that occurred immediately after the financial crisis of 2008.\”

My sense is that rising inequality has meant that our market-oriented economy will tend to focus more on what it can sell to the rising share of households with higher incomes than on the falling share of househoods with middle-class incomes. But again, the stress of the middle-class looking at this shift, or the stress of those have crossed over into the upper income class only to find that their housing, higher education, and health care expenses still look pretty high, is quite different from arguing that the middle-class are objectively worse off.

For a flavor of the argument from Looney, Larrimore, and Splinter, they look at the \”middle class\” as representing the middle three-fifths of the income distribution. They write: \”The `middle class\’ has benefitted from government redistribution in recent decades. For individuals in non-elderly households in the middle three income quintiles (the middle class), the share of federal taxes decreased, and the share of transfers increased. Between 1979 and 2016, market income per person increased 39 percent. But when accounting for taxes and transfers income increased 57 percent. Middle-class income support, however, is a recent phenomenon. Before 2000, market income and income after taxes and transfers grew together. Since 2000, middle-class income after taxes and transfers grew three times faster than market income.\”

Notice that their analysis is focused on the non-elderly, so the results have nothing to do with changes in Social Security or Medicare. Basically, they find that since about 2000, the US government has been able to use a pattern of gradually higher budget deficits along with the ongoing decline in defense spending (as a share of GDP) to finance lower taxes and higher spending for the middle class. Here are a couple of illustrative figures. 

Here\’s the fall in taxes paid by the middle class. Of course, part of the reason why the top 20% are paying more is because of rising inequality of incomes. But the shift is bigger than what can be accounted for by that factor alone. 

Here\’s a figure showing the rising share of transfer payments going to the middle three-fifths. To put this another way, many of the expansions of means-tested federal programs over recent decades have been less focused on raising the level of support for the poor, and more focused on expanding the program to the near-poor who would not previously have been covered. 

The authors summarize: 

Over the last several decades, more federal support flowed to the middle class, while the payments they made for federal programs through taxes have declined. Focusing just on amounts for non-elderly households, between 1979 and 2016, the share of means-tested transfers received by middle-class households increased from 27 percent to 49 percent. Their share of federal taxes paid fell from 45 to 31 percent. These changes are partially the result of economic trends, which reduced the share of market income earned by the middle class. However, changes in federal tax policy eliminated income tax liability for more middle-class households and reduced average tax rates on all but the highest-income households. Since 1979, the share of nonelderly adults facing no income tax nearly doubled, to about 40 percent. At the same time, average federal tax rates for non-elderly middle-class households fell about 4 percentage points. Since 1979, the cumulative effect of these policies was to boost the increase in non-elderly middle-class incomes by 18 percentage points. Federal support for middle-class households has clearly improved their economic stability and material well-being.

So if the federal government is doing less to tax and more to pay benefits to the middle class now than a few decades ago, why doesn\’t it feel that way to so many people? 

One main reason is that many of these benefits do not flow to households directly, but rather go to  health care providers.  For example, the value of excluding employer-provided health insurance from taxation has been rising. But that value doesn\’t show up in anyone\’s paycheck. Similarly, the cost of Medicaid has been rising, but this program involves payments from the federal government to health care providers, so the beneficiaries of this program do not see any additional income coming directly to their household. Another reason is that when inequality is rising, the middle-class may be more focused on the gap that is opening up with the rich, rather than on the calculations mentioned here. But the authors write: \”Since 2000, non-elderly, middle-class incomes grew three times faster when accounting for transfers and federal taxes.\”

Looney, Larrimore, and Splinter were writing their before the COVID-related financial rescue packages of 2020 and 2021. However, they were already pointing out that this shift toward rising federal support for the incomes of middle-class households faced some natural limits: for example, defense outlays as a share of GDP rose from about 3% of GDP in the pre-9/11 days of 2000 to above 4.5% of GDP in 2010, but since then has fallen back to the 3% level. Budget deficits were high during the Great Recession, and will be much higher in 2020. Looking ahead, it will be hard for the federal government to use lower defense spending and ever-higher deficits to increase incomes of the middle three-fifths. 

During my adult life, the main arguments about global population typically revolved around the topic of whether growth in population would overwhelm natural resources and lead to mass starvation and environmental collapse, or whether growth in population would be accompanied by technological progress in a way that would lead to a generally rising standard of living. Although the dire predictions of overpopulation from the 1960s and 1970s have not materialized on schedule, those concerned about overpopulation could always argue that even if the doomsday predictions were premature or delayed, they were nonetheless on their way. 

However, both sides of this controversy started from an assumption that population levels would continue to rise. In the 21st century, this assumption may be proven false. 

US birthrates have been in decline for some years. William Frey recently reported some historical figures on US population growth from the Census Bureau. Here\’s population growth by decade. Notice that the rate of population growth in the 2010s is the lowest of any decade in US history.

Here\’s US population growth annually since 1900. It looks as if 2020 will be the lowest population growth in that time. 

The US pattern is reasonably representative of the world as a whole: that is, population growths is faster in some countries and slower in others. In Japan, Russia, and Spain, for example, total population has already peaked in the last few years and how has started to decline. For an look at projected global population growth, a group of 24 demographers published a \”Fertility, mortality, migration, and population scenarios for 195 countries and territories from 2017 to 2100: a forecasting analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study (The Lancet, October 17, 2020, pp. 1285-1306).  Here\’s a flavor of their results (for readability, I\’ve deleted footnotes and parenthetical references to statistical confidence intervals):

Our reference scenario, based on robust statistical models of fertility, mortality, and migration, suggested that global population will peak in 2064 at 9·73 billion and then decline to 8·79 billion (6·in 2100 … 

Responding to sustained low fertility is likely to become an overriding policy concern in many nations given the economic, social, environmental, and geopolitical consequences of low birth rates. A decline in total world population in the latter half of the century is potentially good news for the global environment. Fewer people on the planet in every year between now and 2100 than the number forecasted by the UNPD would mean less carbon emission, less stress on global food systems, and less likelihood of transgressing planetary boundaries. …

Although good for the environment, population decline and associated shifts in age structure in many nations might have other profound and often negative consequences. In 23 countries, including Japan, Thailand, Spain, and Ukraine, populations are expected to decline by 50% or more. Another 34 countries will probably decline by 25–50%, including China, with a forecasted 48·0% decline.

For the United States, their baseline scenario suggests that population will rise from 324 million in 2017 to a peak of 363 million by 2064, before declining to 335 million in 2100. 

When confronted with predictions that are decades in the future, it\’s of course important to note that they rely on underlying estimates about fertility and longevity, which in turn rely on estimates about factors like education levels and use of contraception. Perhaps there will be a new global baby boom that will surprise the demographers. But it\’s also important to note that much of the future population has already been born. For example, those who will be 40 or older by the year 2061 are already born right now. A sizeable share of those born in the last few years will live to see 2100. Thus, it\’s worth some thought as to where we seem to be headed. 

One obvious shift is that countries around the world will be much more focused on the elderly, because the elderly will be a much large share of the population. The demographers writing in the Lancet note: 

In 2100, if labour force participation by age and sex does not change, the ratio of the non-working adult population to the working population might reach 1·16 globally, up from 0·80 in 2017. This ratio implies that, at the global level, each person working would have to support, through taxation and intra-family income transfers, 1·16 non-working individuals aged 15 years or older (the working age population is defined by the International Labour Organization as those aged 15 years or older).41 Moreover, the number of countries with a dependency ratio higher than 1 is expected to increase from 59 in 2017 to 145 in 2100. Taxation rates required to sustain national health insurance and social security programmes might be so large as to further reduce economic growth and investment. Insecurity from the risk that these programmes could fail might generate considerable political stress in societies with this demographic contraction …

When thinking of these challenges, one\’s mind immediately turns to financing of government programs that support the elderly, like Social Security and Medicare in the United States, but that\’s only the beginning. For example, the US and other countries are going to face an enormous challenge in financing and providing long-term care options for the elderly. There are also likely to be hard-to-predict effects on the rate of economic growth: 

Having fewer individuals between the ages of 15 and 64 years might, however, have larger effects on GDP growth than what we have captured here. For example, having fewer individuals in these age groups might reduce innovation in economies, and fewer workers in general might reduce domestic markets for consumer goods, because many retirees are less likely to purchase consumer durables than middle aged and young adults. Developments such as advancements in robotics could substantially change the trajectory of GDP per working-age adult, reducing the effect of the age structure on GDP growth. However, these effects are very difficult to model at this stage. Furthermore, the impact of robotics might have complex effects on countries for which the trajectory for economic growth might be through low-cost labour supply.

These population shifts will alter perspectives on the magnitude of of countries around the world, too. For example, China is the now the most populous country in the world with a population of 1,412 million in 2017. However, China took dramatic steps to reduce fertility back in the early 1970s, later culminating in the \”one-child\” policy. Thus, the forecast is for China\’s population to peak in 2024 at 1,431 billion, and then fall by nearly half to 731 million in 2100. 

The decline in fertility for India started later. India\’s population is 1,380 million in 2017, but it will overtake China in the next few years, before peaking in these projections at 1,605 million in 2048–and then falling back to 1,093 million by 2100. 

Meanwhile, the fertility decline has barely started in Nigeria. Thus, Nigeria\’s current population of 206 million is forecast to rise continually through the rest of this century, and by 2100 the 790 million Nigerians would outnumber the population of China. 

I do not know if the problems of flat and falling population will ultimately be bigger or smaller than the problems of continually rising population, but the problems will be different ones, and it\’s none too early to start thinking about them. 

The \”curse of knowledge\” refers to a bias documented in various psychology and behavioral economics studies. Once you know something, it can be hard to  remember what it was like before you knew it, or to put yourself in the shoes of someone who doesn\’t know it. It\’s a barrier to communication.

The context of planning provides many examples in which the distribution of outcomes in past experience is ignored. Scientists and writers, for example, are notoriously prone to underestimate the time required to complete a project, even when they have considerable experience of past failures to live up to planned schedules. A similar bias has been documented in engineers\’ estimates of the completion time for repairs of power stations (Kidd, 1970). Although this \’planning fallacy\’ is sometimes attributable to motivational factors such as wishful thinking, it frequently occurs even when underestimation of duration or cost is actually penalized. 

Roger Buehler, a researcher in this area, put it this way in a short explainer piece in 2019 (Character and Context blog of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, \”The Planning Fallacy: An Inside View,\” May 30, 2019). 

The planning fallacy refers to an optimistic prediction bias in which people underestimate the time it will take them to complete a task, despite knowing that similar tasks have typically taken them much longer in the past. An intriguing aspect of the planning fallacy is that people simultaneously hold optimistic expectations concerning a specific future task along with more realistic beliefs concerning how long it has taken them to get things done in the past. When it comes to plans and predictions, people can know the past well and yet be doomed to repeat it. …

 For example, university students typically acknowledge that they have typically finished past assignments very close to their deadlines, yet they insist that they will finish the next project well ahead of the new deadline. Then, predictably, they go on to finish the next project (as usual) right at the deadline.

The planning fallacy is remarkably robust. It appears for small tasks like daily household chores (such as cleaning), as well as for large scale infrastructure projects such as building subways. It generalizes across individual differences in personality and culture, and it applies both to group and individual projects. For example, conscientious people often get things done well before procrastinators, but both groups typically underestimate how long it will take them to get things done.