Comments on: Households Running Out of Wiggle Room http://lanekenworthy.net/2007/12/07/households-running-out-of-wiggle-room/ Lane Kenworthy Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:54:44 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Tom http://lanekenworthy.net/2007/12/07/households-running-out-of-wiggle-room/#comment-164 Sat, 01 Mar 2008 03:37:28 +0000 http://lanekenworthy.net/2007/12/07/households-running-out-of-wiggle-room/#comment-164 It’s too bad people are in so much debt. Baby boomer retirement is just around the corner. Now the economy is sputtering.

http://www.longwavepress.com/Baby_Boomers_Generation_X_SCv1a.pdf

]]> By: Borrowing from the Nest Egg « Consider the Evidence http://lanekenworthy.net/2007/12/07/households-running-out-of-wiggle-room/#comment-160 Fri, 29 Feb 2008 04:25:06 +0000 http://lanekenworthy.net/2007/12/07/households-running-out-of-wiggle-room/#comment-160 [...] more discussion here, here, and [...]

]]> By: Whit Stevens http://lanekenworthy.net/2007/12/07/households-running-out-of-wiggle-room/#comment-82 Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:24:32 +0000 http://lanekenworthy.net/2007/12/07/households-running-out-of-wiggle-room/#comment-82 Lane,

Might benefits and investment income be important items to include this analysis? Perhaps wages haven’t grown much but health benefits have. I’m not asserting this is the case, but it very well maybe. Seems to me the analysis would be improved by including these (though perhaps data is hard to find).

]]> By: beth http://lanekenworthy.net/2007/12/07/households-running-out-of-wiggle-room/#comment-47 Wed, 16 Jan 2008 18:09:21 +0000 http://lanekenworthy.net/2007/12/07/households-running-out-of-wiggle-room/#comment-47 Alex ,
what you seem to be forgetting is that cost of living has increased while wages have stayed the same, your reading of both the artical and history is incorrect.
Beth

]]> By: Lane Kenworthy http://lanekenworthy.net/2007/12/07/households-running-out-of-wiggle-room/#comment-42 Wed, 16 Jan 2008 11:58:38 +0000 http://lanekenworthy.net/2007/12/07/households-running-out-of-wiggle-room/#comment-42 Whit:

The earnings data here do not include employer-provided benefits or investment income.

Lane

]]> By: greatwhitehunter http://lanekenworthy.net/2007/12/07/households-running-out-of-wiggle-room/#comment-38 Wed, 16 Jan 2008 05:17:27 +0000 http://lanekenworthy.net/2007/12/07/households-running-out-of-wiggle-room/#comment-38 You like to throw out a ton of irrelevant statistics, don’t you? The reason a larger share of Americans are getting behind on their mortgages is twofold:

1. Al larger share of Americans are homeowners.
2. In 2005 and 2006 a huge percentage of the new homeowners added to the total were marginal borrowers using subprime credit.

The current crisis is no different than any other asset bubble: at the last minute, when prices are already too high, the mania begins to sweep the least qualified participants into the market. Then the market runs out of buyers, prices plummet, and the weak hands are the first to break. People are defaulting because they borrowed more than they could afford. That’s a very simple concept and one that most Americans get. Apparently you don’t.

]]> By: Whit Stevens http://lanekenworthy.net/2007/12/07/households-running-out-of-wiggle-room/#comment-30 Tue, 15 Jan 2008 23:32:49 +0000 http://lanekenworthy.net/2007/12/07/households-running-out-of-wiggle-room/#comment-30 Does “earnings” consist of wages, or does it also include things benefits and investment income?

Thanks,
Whit

]]> By: Considering the Evidence On Inequality « Education and Class http://lanekenworthy.net/2007/12/07/households-running-out-of-wiggle-room/#comment-5 Fri, 14 Dec 2007 18:21:13 +0000 http://lanekenworthy.net/2007/12/07/households-running-out-of-wiggle-room/#comment-5 [...] I am happy to find Lane Kenworthy’s new blog Consider the Evidence, in he’ll write about ” how available evidence helps — or fails to help — answer [...]

]]> By: alex http://lanekenworthy.net/2007/12/07/households-running-out-of-wiggle-room/#comment-3 Fri, 14 Dec 2007 06:16:54 +0000 http://lanekenworthy.net/2007/12/07/households-running-out-of-wiggle-room/#comment-3 I’m not sure about the second of your explanations.

You claim that many two-adult households have offset wage stagnation by…
One doesn’t offset stagnation; one offsets decline. If wages have been unchanged, then the situation is no worse than it has been.

…by sending the second adult into the the labor force. But as Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi point out in The Two-Income Trap, for a lot of households that option is no longer available.

So let me get this straight. Let’s say we have a household with one person holding a full-time job. According to your analysis, if the second person were to get a full-time job, then…the family would become more sensitive to short-run financial constraints. Something is fishy, no?

My answer is that it obviously depends on what is done with the extra money earned by sending the second person to work. For example, if all of it is spent, then the family has the possibility to cut that extra spending during a downturn. On the other hand, if the family uses the extra money to have another child and support him/her, then the family does indeed become more sensitive to financial constraints.

So the fact that more people work cannot be the cause of financial insecurity – it must lie in some other choices/constraints people face these days.

]]> By: Crooked Timber » » Kenworthy and Rauchway in the blogosphere http://lanekenworthy.net/2007/12/07/households-running-out-of-wiggle-room/#comment-2 Fri, 14 Dec 2007 04:37:51 +0000 http://lanekenworthy.net/2007/12/07/households-running-out-of-wiggle-room/#comment-2 [...] good books on the comparative politics of inequality is now blogging at Consider the Evidence. This post, for example, does a nice job of bringing together some of the data on economic risk (on which more [...]

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