SS privatization

Kelley jimmyjames at softhome.net
Sat Aug 17 13:42:56 PDT 2002


At 11:22 AM 8/17/02 -0700, you wrote:
>
> > The bull lives mainly in the minds of the rich!

not entirely, as we see from this post.


>The
> > poll in question was "commissioned by the Cato Institute and
> > conducted by Zogby International," with a sample that over-represents
> > the well off,

It looks like this uses household income--survey researchers tend to use household income. It's a better measure in most respects. Their sample tends to match the household income distribution pretty accurately:

"21.6% of the nation's families have incomes less than $25,000; 38.8% are in the middle-class, defined here as having incomes between $35,000 and 75,000; and 2.7% of families have incomes above $200,000." http://www.epinet.org/datazone/acs/

Those numbers are pretty close to the survey sample.

Interestingly, both union members and the well-to-do said that neither party could fix the problems.

>better educated,

the survey sample, again, looks reflective of the US population. The + next to college graduate probably indicates that what they did was collapse recipients of two year degrees with those who obtained 4 year degrees. It is no more skewed toward the more educated than any other survey since all telephone surveys are slightly skewed to begin with. However, typically the cost of hunting down the transient and homeless is too great to get a more representative sample of those with no HS education. But, my sister has not HS education and I'm pretty sure she just states that she has one if anyone asks.

And, in any case, apparently educational attainment had so little to do with anything that it didn't even rate as a factor worth discussing in the report.

>born-again

not at all. 23 million USers identify as members of the Assemblies of God, Seventh Day Adventists, Church of the Nazarene, or Southern Baptist convention. By contrast, only 17 million identify as Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopal (traditional mainliners). Among those groups, you'll find plenty of mainliners who'll identify themselves as B.A. Sociology, Alex Thio

>and/or Southerners.

it's unclear what this has to do with anything. However, it clearly doesn't over represent the south. Acc. to the 2000 census, 35% of the population live in the south (survey: 30.6) http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/gender/ppl-121/tab20.txt


> > ***** Methodology
> > This survey of 1,205 likely voters nationwide was
> > conducted from 5
> > p.m. on Thursday, July 29, through 2:30 p.m. on
> > Monday, August 2,
> > 1999. All calls were made from Zogby International
> > headquarters in
> > Utica, N.Y. The margin of error is +/- 3.0 percent.
> >
> > Sample Characteristics
> >
> > Characteristic Frequency Percent
> > Total 1205 100.0
> >
> > East 298 24.7
> > South 369 30.6
> > Central/Great Lakes 352 29.2
> > West 186 15.4
> > <snip>
> > Less than high school 76 6.3
> > H.S. education 306 25.4
> > Some college 365 30.3
> > College graduate+ 458 38.0
> > <snip>
> > Roman Catholic 299 25.0
> > Protestant 527 44.1
> > Jewish 15 1.3
> > Other (religion) 356 29.7
> > Born-again 257 49.0
> > Not born-again 268 51.0
> > <snip>
> > Less than $15,000 122 11.1
> > $15,000-24,999 163 14.7
> > $25,000-34,999 165 14.9
> > $35,000-49,000 209 18.9
> > $50,000-74,999 222 20.1
> > $75,000 or more 224 20.3
> >
> > <http://www.socialsecurity.org/zogby/fullreport.pdf>
> > *****
> >
> > The report doesn't say so clearly, but it appears
> > (based on the wording in the report)

what wording would that be?


>that the dollar figures refer
> > to individual > earnings, not household incomes.

last i checked, the median individual income was 31k, so i doubt it.

given that they asked about of household questions about SS recipiency, I reckon that they looked at household income, too.

kelley


> > --



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