Welfare Queens Rule Very Tiny Kingdom

Percentage of Americans aged 15 or older who are on welfare: 0.96%

Source: Census Bureau

The Affluence of Same-Sex Couples

Among the nation's 6.5 million unmarried couples, 581,300 are same-sex couples, according to a Census Bureau analysis of data from the 2009 American Community Survey.

Male same-sex couples are far more affluent than married couples. Female same-sex couples are equally as affluent as married couples. Here is average household income by type of couple...

Male same-sex couples: $116,749
Married opposite-sex couples: $93,351
Female same-sex couples: $92,213
Unmarried opposite-sex couples: $64,005

Source: Census Bureau, Families and Living Arrangements, Working Papers

Bet You Didn't Know

Average price of a double-wide mobile home: $72,900.

Source: Census Bureau, Manufactured Homes Survey, February 2011

Rent or Buy?

With home prices continuing to slide, a handful of Americans are finding themselves in the catbird seat, trying to decide whether to rent or buy their next home. Pundits are offering advice, realtors and homebuilders are offering incentives, and the media are dissecting and mapping price-to-rent ratios in cities across the country. Ignore them all. This is a decision that does not require a calculator, but instead an honest appraisal of your life. Only if you meet the following five criteria should you consider buying a house:

1. You love where you live. Buy a house only if you know without a doubt that you want to live in an area--and in a house--for the foreseeable future. Typically, the advice is to buy if you plan to live in an area for at least five years. This is laughable today. You should think decades, not years. In many areas, it takes years just to sell a house. So forget the "starter home," shrewd investment, and flip-this-house concepts. All are out of date. Buy only if you do not plan to sell--ever.

2. Your employer loves you. Buy a house only if you know without a doubt that you have a job or income stream for the foreseeable future. How many working Americans feel that way? Only 52 percent, according to the latest General Social Survey. With the economy still in ICU, even those who think they have job security may be in for a surprise.

3. The economy loves your employer. Maybe your employer really does love you, but does the economy love your employer? If the answer is yes--no matter what Steve Jobs happens to invent next--then you might consider buying a home.

4. You love your spouse (and your spouse loves you). Buy a house only if your marriage will outlast your mortgage. Also, make sure your spouse meets criteria 1, 2, and 3.

5. You can afford the commute. Buy a house only if the commute will not crimp your lifestyle--no matter how high the price of gasoline. House prices may be low in the farflung suburban rings, but you will be trapped in a gasoline ghetto.

Young Adults No Longer Most Likely to be Uninsured

Young adults no longer have the distinction of being the age group least likely to have health insurance. The percentage of 18-to-26-year-olds without health insurance fell from 28.6 percent in 2009 to 24.0 percent in the January-April 2011 time period--a 4.6 percentage point decline. Behind the decline is the provision in the Health Care Reform Act, which went into effect in September 2010, allowing adults under age 26 to remain on their parents' health insurance plan.

Now people aged 27 to 35 are the ones least likely to have health insurance. In the January-April 2011 time period, 26.7 percent of the age group was uninsured, up from 25.2 percent in 2009.

Source: Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index

Where the Bartenders Are

State with the highest concentration of...

Pest control workers: Florida
Fashion designers: New York
Mental health counselors: Pennsylvania
Meeting planners: District of Columbia
Optometrists: Hawaii
Crossing guards: New Jersey
Bill collectors: South Dakota
Bartenders: Montana

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment Statistics

Rounding Problems

For anyone who writes about numbers, rounding is a problem. It always seems to be the case--although it happens only 10 percent of the time--that a percentage figure under discussion ends in a .5, as in 22.5 percent of people aged 65 or older have a bachelor's degree.

When writing about numbers, decimals are messy. It is distracting for readers to lumber over decimals. Readers can get lost in the complexity of decimals and fail to get the point. That's why, when I write about percentages, I like to limit the discussion to whole numbers if possible. Most of the time, this is not a problem. Nine out of ten decimal digits are rounded easily and without torment. There are rules, after all. But .5 is a problem. When a .5 crops up, do you round up when writing about the number?

I know, I know. There is a rule. A .5 rounds up. It seems simple, but it's not. What if the number being reported has itself been rounded? Let's say the number 22.5 appears on a government spreadsheet. The question is, did the government round the number up or down to arrive at 22.5? The number could have been 22.478, for example, or it could have been 22.508. If it was 22.478, then rounding up to 23 in the discussion would be incorrect. To be correct requires diving deeper into the decimal places of the number shown. Most of the time this is only an annoyance and not a problem--the cell can be highlighted and additional decimal places produced with a few clicks of the "increase decimal" button, or the division of numerator by denominator can be done by hand, the curtain parted, and the additional decimals exposed. But occasionally the government produces tables with truncated numbers and the rounding direction cannot be determined. In that case, the messy decimal .5 must be retained in the discussion. This is never a happy moment.

FYI, the 22.5 percent of people aged 65 or older with a bachelor's degree rounds up to 23 (22.508).

Single Mothers, Good or Bad?

A recent Pew Research Center poll asked whether "more single women having children without a male partner to help raise them" was a "bad thing for society." Not surprisingly, the 69 percent majority of the public said it was bad.

This is backwards thinking, however. It's not that single mothers are bad for society, it's that bad societies create single mothers. When men cannot find stable employment that pays a living wage, single mothers are the result. According to the National Center for Health Statistics 2009 report on births, here are the percentages of babies born to single mothers by race and Hispanic origin:

Black: 73%
Hispanic: 53%
Non-Hispanic white: 29%
Asian: 17%

Note the order of the race and Hispanic origin groups, with blacks most likely to have babies out of wedlock and Asians least likely. These numbers are not a measure of morals. They are a measure of the economic opportunity available to men in our society. Asian men are highly educated and typically earn above-average wages. Black men--even today--are often shut out of stable jobs that pay a living wage. Thus, the consequences on women and children.

Knowing these facts about men, women, and children, this trend should set off alarm bells: Between 1970 and 2009, the percentage of Americans babies born to single mothers climbed from 11 to 41 percent.

New Mothers

Average age at which American women have their first baby: 25.1 years.

Source: National Center for Health Statistics, Births: Final Data for 2008

Does Childbearing Lower Women's Wages?

It has long been assumed that a woman's lifetime earnings are reduced by childbearing. A new study confirms that assumption and also measures the size of the loss. In an analysis (Working Paper 16582) of a longitudinal survey that tracked women aged 14 to 21 in 1979 for more than 25 years, researchers from the National Bureau of Economic Research discovered that the average high-scoring (i.e., smart) woman loses $230,000 in wages over her lifetime if she has children. Motherhood reduces the average low-scoring woman's wages by a smaller $49,000.

Wanted: Software Engineers

The number of employed Americans fell by 7 million between 2007 (the year employment peaked) and 2010. Employment in some occupations has grown, however. During those years the number of computer software engineers grew 13 percent to surpass 1 million. Here is the age distribution of those workers in 2010:

Under age 25	4.5%
Aged 25 to 34	31.2%
Aged 35 to 44	30.5%
Aged 45 to 54	23.0%
Aged 55 to 64	9.3%
Aged 65+	1.5%

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, unpublished table

Get Ready for More Census Data

Today the Census Bureau began its release of 2010 census demographic profile data on a state-by-state basis. Tables include total, male, and female populations in five-year and selected age groups, Asians and Hispanics by ethnic group, household type, household relationship, housing occupancy, and housing tenure. Local area data within states are also available for these characteristics. Data for 13 states will be released each week, with data for all states (and local areas) available by the end of May.

Today's release is for the following states: Florida, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia.

Next week's release (May 12) will be for the following states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Puerto Rico.

Interesting nugget from today's release: In Florida, households with people aged 65 or older (31 percent) outnumber households with children under age 18 (30 percent).

Dental Work

Percentage of adults who have been to a dentist in the past year, by household income...

Less than $35,000: 45%
$35,000 to $49,999: 54%
$50,000 to $74,999: 66%
$75,000 to $99,999: 72%
$100,000 or more: 80%

Source: National Center for Health Statistics, Summary Health Statistics for U.S. Adults: National Health Interview Survey, 2009

What is Wrong with this Article?

"New Households Form at Fastest Rate Since '07 in Resurgent U.S.," headlined a recent Bloomberg article. The premise of the article: pent-up demand for independent households among young adults who have been doubling up with mom and dad is going to boost housing starts in the near future.

No doubt there is pent-up demand for independent housing among young adults, but at best they will become renters not owners. The market for new homes is not likely to recover anytime soon and perhaps not in our lifetime. Unemployment, student loan debt, and depressed wages have shaken the middle class, and the epicenter of the quake is among young adults. At this point, we are only beginning to see the extent of the destruction, and the ground is still shaking.

Yet the experts insist that business as usual is just around the corner. Comments one economist in the Bloomberg article: "The demographic component of housing demand is strong: it's just the economic and psychological components that are holding things back." So, it's just the money and the abject terror--no biggie.

"At some point, housing starts will likely take off in a big way," comments another expert. "I just do not think that Americans will settle for living in more crowded homes."

Settle? Settle? Do they think money grows on trees? Until the housing industry wakes up to the fact that its interests and the interests of union-busting politicians, stingy corporations, greedy universities, and predatory financial institutions are not the same, there is no hope of a return to business as usual in the housing industry.

New Citizens

Hundreds of thousands of foreign-born residents of the United States gained their citizenship status in 2010, according to a new report on naturalizations by the Department of Homeland Security. Last year, 619,913 legal permanent residents of the United States became U.S. citizens. This number is well below the record high of more than 1 million in 2008.

Newly naturalized citizens had a median age of 39, the 53 percent majority were female, and two out of three were married. They had spent a median of six years in legal permanent resident status in the United States before becoming citizens. Mexico was the most common country of birth for newly naturalized citizens, but accounted for only 11 percent of total naturalizations in 2010.

Public Schools Still Make Room for Art

Despite the obsession in the educational establishment with the three Rs, the great majority of public elementary and secondary schools still offer instruction in music and the visual arts, according to a 2009-10 survey by the National Center for Education Statistics. Among elementary schools, 94 percent offer music and 83 percent offer visual art classes. Among secondary schools the figures are 91 and 89 percent, respectively. On board to teach these subjects at most schools are full-time art specialists.

Look Out Below!

Here's a number you are going to see bandied about in the next few weeks, purporting to show how public schools are failing. Supposedly, only 75.5 percent of 9th graders in 2005-06 graduated from high school in 2008-09. That's the latest "averaged high school graduation rate," according to a new report released by the National Center for Education Statistics. By state the statistic varies from a high of 90.7 percent in Wisconsin to a low of 56.3 percent in Nevada.

Don't believe it. The first sign that this is a bogus measure is its tortured name. The second sign of bogosity is that the rate doesn't match reality--it is far below the 89.9 percent of 16-to-24-year-olds who actually have a high school diploma or GED (see table here).

The third sign that the "averaged high school graduation rate" is bogus is the methodology behind it, invented by morons. The rate is calculated by taking the number of high school graduates in a school district in a given year and dividing by the number of freshmen in the school district four years earlier. So, any student who moves out of a school district is counted as a dropout. That's why states with little migration have high "graduation" rates, and states with lots of migration have low "graduation" rates. Pure genius.

The Young Are Optimistic

Percentage who say it is very or somewhat likely that today's youth will have a better life than their parents, by age...

18 to 29: 57%
30 to 44: 45%
50 to 64: 36%
65 or older: 37%

Source: Gallup

Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead

Typically, older Americans are the ones most informed about the news. Yesterday's killing of Osama Bin Laden may have been the first Big News event in which the youngest generation was the first to know and spread the news to their peers in a whoosh of texting, Twittering, and Facebook posts.

On the East Coast, many older Americans were asleep when the news that Osama Bin Laden was dead burst onto millions of cellphones. It is likely that many did not hear the news until hours later when they collected their morning paper. There is no doubt that the audience for President Obama's late night remarks was decidedly youthful, as were the crowds that formed spontaneously in Washington, D.C. and New York.

Everyone under the age of, say, 25 has another reason besides their late night schedules and texting prowess to follow the news about Osama Bin Laden's killing so closely. Older generations have seen enemies come and go--Germans, Japanese, North Vietnamese, communists, Richard Nixon. For the younger generation, Osama Bin Laden was The Enemy. Now he's dead. This is their V-Day.

Death Row, 2010

Number of prisoners on death row: 3,260.
Number executed: 46

Source: Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics