Conf Board on living standards

[Brad De Long]

>
>By JACOB M. SCHLESINGER
>Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
>
>WASHINGTON -- The long economic boom has pushed unemployment to its 
>lowest level in decades, but more jobs don't necessarily mean higher 
>living standards.
>
>A new report shows that an American holding a full-time job in the 
>late 1990s was still as likely to fall below the official poverty 
>line as a similar worker in the 1980s, and more likely to do so than 
>a full-time worker in the 1970s.
>
>"Working full-time and year-round is, for more and more Americans, 
>not enough," the Conference Board asserts in a study titled "Does a 
>Rising Tide Lift All Boats?" "This is not the outcome one would 
>expect from the longest economic expansion in economic history," 
>adds the report to be released Thursday by the New York-based 
>nonprofit business research center.
>
>Some economists said the Conference Board report was flawed...

Not flawed, exactly, but incomplete. It speaks to the distribution of 
market income, and forgets that we do have a feeble and anemic--but 
effective (even if in some ways less effective than it used to 
be)--social insurance state.

Brad DeLong