I'll never forget a study that the Urban Institute made about 10 years ago. It froze the constituents in the base and tracked them over something like 10 years. It found that the upper middle class had made more progress. However, it also showed that people made progress through the quintiles. So, individuals in general do not remain where they were they make progress. The media loves to ignore good news, people seem to like to believe the worst about people, especially if they make more money.
Do researchers have some smart way of imputing the cash-income equivalent of non-cash transfers? Say the government spends $X subsidizing my education or housing or whatever. If that substitutes $X of my consumption, clearly that should count as $X additional income on my part. But presumably in most cases it will substitute some smaller amount of spending and should thus count as some smaller amount of income. This seems like a tricky problem to me.
I'll never forget a study that the Urban Institute made about 10 years ago. It froze the constituents in the base and tracked them over something like 10 years. It found that the upper middle class had made more progress. However, it also showed that people made progress through the quintiles. So, individuals in general do not remain where they were they make progress. The media loves to ignore good news, people seem to like to believe the worst about people, especially if they make more money.
Do researchers have some smart way of imputing the cash-income equivalent of non-cash transfers? Say the government spends $X subsidizing my education or housing or whatever. If that substitutes $X of my consumption, clearly that should count as $X additional income on my part. But presumably in most cases it will substitute some smaller amount of spending and should thus count as some smaller amount of income. This seems like a tricky problem to me.