I find here that the early 2000s witnessed both exploding debt and the middle-class squeeze. While median wealth grew briskly in the late 1990s, it fell slightly between 2001 and 2004, while the inequality of net worth increased slightly. Indebtedness, which fell substantially during the late...

Existing empirical schemas of class structure do not specify the capitalist class in an adequate manner. We propose a schema in which the specification of capitalist households is based on wealth thresholds. Individuals in noncapitalist households are assigned class locations based on their...

A central issue confronting soon-to-retire workers (i.e., those aged 47–64) is whether they will have command over enough resources (both private and public) to maintain a decent standard of living in retirement. Typically, the adequacy of projected retirement income is judged in relation to...

We examine the economic well-being of the elderly, using the Levy Institute Measure of Economic Well-Being (LIMEW). Compared to the conventional measures of income, the LIMEW is a comprehensive measure that incorporates broader definitions of income from wealth, government expenditures, and...

Using PSID data for the years 1984-99, we estimate the level and severity of asset poverty. We find that despite a sharp decline in the official poverty rate, the asset poverty rate barely budged over this period. Moreover, the severity of asset poverty increased during this period. The...

The age structure of capital plays an important role in the measurement of productivity. It has been argued that the slowdown in the 1970s can be ascribed to the aging of the stock of capital. In this paper, we incorporate the age structure in productivity measurement. One proposition proves...

Standard official measures of economic well-being are based on money income. The general consensus is that such measures are seriously flawed because they ignore several crucial determinants of well-being. We examine two such determinants - household wealth and public consumption - in the...

Neither neoclassical nor Keynesian economics displays much patience with the popular notion that technical progress of the labor-saving variety tends to swell the ranks of the unemployed. Those who believe that market forces tend automatically to bring the economy back, if not to "full...

Using PSID data for the years 1984 to 1999, we estimate the level and severity of asset poverty. Our results indicate that the share of asset-poor households remained almost the same and the severity of poverty increased during this period, despite the growth in the economy and the financial...

I develop three measures of structural change on the basis of U.S. data: changes in occupational composition, changes in input-output technical coefficients, and changes in capital coefficients. Using pooled cross-section, time-series data for 44 industries over the period from 1970 to 1990, I...