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off the charts
POLICY INSIGHT
BEYOND THE NUMBERS

In Case You Missed It...

| By CBPP

This week on Off the Charts, we focused on the economy, income inequality, and our special series on extreme poverty.

  • On the economy, Chad Stone examined the February jobs report, noting that despite another solid month of job growth, the recovery still has a long way to go to restore a strong labor market.

    Nick Johnson pointed out that the jobs report showed an uptick in state and local education employment after several years of large job losses.

  • On income inequality, Chuck Marr showed that even in 2009, a “down” year for high earners, the top 1 percent of households had more total Adjusted Gross Income than the bottom 50 percent.

    Chad Stone noted that the share of the nation’s income going to the top 1 percent rebounded in 2010, and he contrasted those gains with the increase in the number of people in severe poverty in recent years.

    Hannah Shaw noted that the income gains for the top 1 percent in 2010 occurred mostly at the very top of that group.

  • On extreme poverty, for which we wrote a three-part series, Arloc Sherman highlighted a new study showing that the number of families living on less than $2 per person a day more than doubled in the last 15 years.

    Stacy Dean showed that SNAP (food stamps) is a powerful antidote to extreme poverty, and Barbara Sard explained that proposals to raise rents on the poorest recipients of federal housing assistance would add to the hardships of families in extreme poverty.

In other news this week, we released Chad Stone’s statement on the February jobs report and a report on the increase in income concentration at the top in 2010.