Doug writes:
>[this is a crappy performance for a supposed 'recovery' year]
Yes. Especially the income distribution. It is said to have remained unchanged (Gini measure). Since at this point in the cycle it there would normally be less inequality, that may be tantamont to flagging another round of growing inequality.
Curious outlier on income:
>-- Native households had a real median income in 2003 ($44,347), not
>different from that in 2002. Foreign-born households experienced a real
>decline of 3.5 percent to $37,499.
That's a really big divergence in just one year. Is it a "Sept. 11th-effect"? Doesn't seem to reflect some otherwise unnoticed surge in immigration. Then the poverty figures state:
>-- T he native population had increases in their poverty rate (from 11.5
>percent in 2002 to 11.8 percent in 2003) and their number in poverty (from
>29.0 million in 2002 to 30.0 million in 2003). Poverty rates remained
>unchanged for foreign-born naturalized citizens (10.0 percent) and for
>foreign-born noncitizens (21.7 percent). Although the number for
>foreign-born naturalized citizens in poverty (1.3 million) did not change
>from 2002, the number of foreign-born noncitizens in poverty increased (to
>4.6 million in 2003 from 4.3 million in 2002).
So we are not speaking of a decline focused on the foreign-born at the bottom.
Doug: Any insights to the claim that these figures were issued a month early to keep them away from the election?
Paul