Homer Simpson–The Best

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It’s official!

A survey by Entertainment Weekly magazine named Homer Simpson the greatest character created for film or television during the past 20 years, beating out Harry Potter.

To the Oxford English Dictionary, Homer Simpson is the immortal utterer of the word, “d’oh!” To the people of Britain, Homer Simpson is the “greatest American” – the fictional character they would most like to see become president of the United States.

No information about the survey. Still, this cartoon has been around for forever it seems–so it must still have great appeal to both adults and children.

Is It Government’s Job to Make Us Happy?

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I came across Arthur C. Brooks’ book : Gross National Happiness: Why Happiness Matters For America—And How We Can Get More Of It, published in 2008

From a research perspective, we have to first ask what is happiness, whether it can be measured and if so, how. “Happiness is measurable,” Brooks states. (p.9).  Really?  In my world, I operate with a general guiding principle that says concepts like happiness do not lend themselves to objective measurement. He uses surveys that have asked  people to report their perceptions about their happiness. This is self-reported data and it is as good as it is going to get.  Surveys are a valid methodology and we can track people’s self-reports over time. We tend to assume that any problems with the self-reported data will balance out over time.

One premise of his research is that is a connection between large governmental policies and people’s perceptions about their happiness. Do you think that is the case?

Looking at 30 years of data, the self-reported levels of happiness do not vary much over time. Analysis of the General Social Survey (a very large national survey) found that in 1972, 30% reported being “very happy” and 53% reported being “pretty happy.” In 2002, 30% reported being “very happy” and 57% reported being “pretty happy.” (See table 1, p. 213). It is worth noting that even a national tragedy like 9/11 did not appear to impact self-reported levels of happiness. Continue reading »

Brooks: Most Americans Regret They Can’t Work More. Really?

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From Arthur C. Brooks, Gross Domestic Happiness:-Advice to policy makers: We should celebrate our work, not impose greater leisure. (p. 202). One piece of is there a generic cialis evidence is survey data that shows that the overwhelming majority of Americans surveyed are satisfied with their jobs. I remember being surprised when viagra mail order analyzing surveys of federal employees that also showed the overwhelming majority reported being satisfied. However, if you looked at responses to does generic viagra work other survey questions, you saw dissatisfaction with pay, micro-management, poor management, and other quality of worklife factors. I concluded that people were satisfied with the work they actually did despite their dissatisfaction with the other qualities of their workplace. He then presents data that shows that people who are satisfied with work are more likely to be happy than those who are not satisfied. He states, “the data are overwhelmingly clear that for most Americans, work in and of itself brings happiness.”( p. 159). While there may be an association between job satisfaction and happiness in life (and he provides no such measure in his analysis), association does not mean the relationship is causal nor does it indicate which one is the causal variable. It is possible that people who are generally happy with life are more likely to be resilient in facing challenges at work and therefore report feeling satisfied. viagra vs cialis Brooks goes on to state, “Most Americans regret they can’t work more, not that they best canadian online pharmacy reviews can’t work less,” The data? He reports a 1998 study that found “only 11 percent of the American workers said they wished they could spend much less time on their paid work—versus 12 percent who said they could spend much more time on it.” (p. 159). Continue reading »

Do 1,146 respondents truly represent 300 million people?

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From Pew:

May 11, 2010

Q. On “news” sites, one reads daily that “43% surveyed think this,” or “72% of ….name the group” are doing this. Yet, when one performs due diligence, the statistic recedes into non-importance, because so many surveys involve, say, 1,146 respondents. With a population approaching 300 million, how can any responsible news source report such insignificant data?

A lot of people share your skepticism about sampling. It is not intuitively easy to grasp how a very small sample of a very large population can be accurate. But pollsters have a stock (if smart-alec) reply: If you don’t believe in random sampling, ask your doctor to take all of your blood next time you need a blood test. Indeed, sampling is used in many fields — by accountants looking for fraud, medical researchers, even manufacturers doing quality control checks on their products. The key for survey sampling is that every person in the population (in our case, adults living in the U.S.) has a chance of being included, and that pollsters have a way to calculate that chance. Our samples are constructed in such a way that nearly every telephone in the U.S. — cell phones as well as landlines — has an equal chance of being included. This permits us to put a margin of likely error on our findings and to say how confident we are in the result. Continue reading »

Kids and Happiness

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Driving home before Mothers’ Day, I was listening to NPR and heard a story about how people with children were less happy than people without children. That caught my attention. A quick search on the internet did not find any current study but there was an article in Newsweek in July 7-14 2008 edition that cited several studies which all confirmed this seeming fact. For example, Robin Simon, a sociology professor from Florida State University, looked at data from the National Survey of Families and Households (n=13,000) and concluded: “In fact, no group of parents—married, single, step or even empty nest—reported significantly greater emotional well-being than people who never had children.” Author Arthur C. Brooks reports “parents are about 7 percentage points less likely to report being happy than the childless.” If this is the case, then why do people have children? Continue reading »

Chart: Stock Market Over Time

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I came across this chart showing the historical value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, starting in 1902 to March 2010.

This chart is a great example of the distortions that are created when an unequal scale is used. The scale showing the average value of the Dow Jones is shown on the right hand side. The increments are wide apart as the value goes up from $31 to $1,000. That rise over 80 years takes half the vertical distance. But then the increments get compressed as the value rises from 1,000 to $10,000 from 1982 to March 2010. This is a dramatic increase but because the scale at the top is so compressed, it does not accurately portray the change. What would it look like if they used equal increments? Would the chart tell a different story?

Here it is in a word document: dow jones average over time

Here is the url: http://stockcharts.com/charts/historical/djia1900.html

Chart: Unemployment During Recession and Recovery

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I came across this chart in a recent report: “Creating a Safety Net that Works When the Economy Doesn’t: The Role of the Food Stamp and TANF Programs,” By LaDonna Pavetti, et al. released by the Urban Institute.

The chart shows the unemployment rates during recessions and recoveries. It is a good chart–it is clear, easy to understand and uses accurate scales. I am not sure how economists decide when a recession has moved into recovery though. Only the November 1982 recession is actually at the peak of unemployment rates and then declines. The current recession, according to this chart, ended in July 2009 and we are now in recovery, even though the unemployment rate is still rising. But then the unemployment rate continued to rise in the recovery period of the 1991 and 2001 recessions.

For those who are still losing jobs, this probably does not feel like a recovery. The report itself found that the food stamp program has generally been responsive to the needs of those who have lost their jobs. TANF (the reinvented welfare program), however, has not been responsive.

chart unemployment recession

Economic Woes–PEW reports 92% give the economy a negative rating

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Americans are united in the belief that the economy is in bad shape (92% give it a negative rating), and for many the repercussions are hitting close to home. Fully 70% of Americans say they have faced one or more job or financial-related problems in the past year, up from 59% in February 2009. Jobs have become difficult to find in local communities for 85% of Americans. A majority now says that someone in their household has been without a job or looking for work (54%); just 39% said this in February 2009. Only a quarter reports receiving a pay raise or a better job in the past year (24%), while almost an equal number say they have been laid off or lost a job (21%). Read more

Economic Woes

Federal Expenditures on Elementary-Age Children in 2008

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The Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute just released its study on Federal Expenditures on Elementary-Age Children in 2008 (Ages 6–11). (download at: http://www.brookings.edu/reports/2010/0415_public_investment_isaacs.aspx

The researchers report they are providing “first-ever estimates of federal expenditures” for this age group, and conclude that “the federal government spent $113 billion in outlays and on reductions in taxes on elementary-age children in 2008.”

It is no easy task to locate all possible federal dollars that are spent on children aged 6-11. Often times, this information may not captured.  Medicaid and welfare, for example, do not break down its expenditures based on ages of these children. The researchers acknowledge that they made estimates.

They added up outlays along with what I would call tax expenditures (the taxes that would have been collected if federal tax law did not grant exemptions, tax credits and deductions) to get to their total.

I was surprised to see tax expenditures included here–the $23 billion in reductions in taxes and another $23 billion in refundable portions of tax credits. I have a hard time seeing this as a federal expenditure–there is no clear program or intended purpose specific to these children. The purpose of these tax expenditures is to ease the tax burdens of families. Continue reading »