Category: Data Source

But when the 60 percent of Americans are net recipients of federal benefits, is it at least possible that some are not desperately poor?

That's Reihan Salam, the link is here.

This is a very useful paper, full of facts and figures on VATs around the world.  Here is one bit:

As shown in the first column, all OECD members other than the U.S. have adopted the VAT over the last 30 years or so, beginning with France continuing through adoption by Australia in 2000. The (unweighted) average standard rate of VAT is about 17 percent, but with considerable variation. Within the EU, it varies between 15 percent (the minimum permissible under the union’s rules) in Luxembourg, and 25 percent (the maximum) in Denmark and Hungary. And several non–EU countries apply far lower standard rates than this, the most striking being the fi ve–percent rate in Japan. Most also apply a reduced rate to some commodities, with domestic zero–rating being quite widespread. The fourth column shows that revenue from the VAT is also typically substantial– averaging a little over seven percent of GDP–but again with considerable variation, from a high of over 12 percent of GDP in Iceland to a low of around 2.5 percent in Japan.

The authors — Michael Keen and Ben Lockwood — conclude that a VAT is a "weak" money machine in the sense that increases in a VAT are partially offset by declines in other tax rates.  They also note:

In a purely statistical sense, there is, thus, no strong evidence that the VAT has in itself caused the growth of government.

I saw this on Twitter somewhere, though now I forget whom to thank; sorry! [Update: It is probably "the wisdom of Garett Jones"]

In a paper in Social Problems, Saperstein and Penner find that there is a surprising amount of variability in racial identification in the NLSY.  Some of this variation is due to error or other random factors but some of it also appears to be systematic.  In particular, the authors find that if someone has been incarcerated they are more likely to self-identify as black as well as to be independently identified as black.  As the authors put it

Results show that respondents who have been incarcerated are more
likely to identify and be seen as black, and less likely to identify
and be seen as white, regardless of how they were perceived or
identified previously. This suggests that race is not a fixed
characteristic of individuals but is flexible and continually negotiated
in everyday interactions.

Here is a key table.  In the first column is the respondent's self-identification, European or Black, in 1979.  Thus 95% of the people who identified as European in 1979 and who were not incarcerated between 1979 and 2002 identified themselves as White in 2002.  In other words, racial identification for the non-incarcerated was quite stable.  But only 80% of the people who identified as European in 1979 and who were incarcerated between 1979 and 2002 identified themselves as White in 2002.  Thus incarceration appears to affect how people identify themselves.

The result is surprising at first but makes sense once one sees it as a natural extension of Akerlof and Kranton's work on identity.

Note that there are some issues with the data since the precise
questions asked and options given changed over time (hence the change
from "European descent" to "White")–nevertheless, the differences
conditioning on incarceration appear to be robust–but see the paper
for more.

Hat tip Gabriel Rossman.