Charts

Explore state- and county-level economic vitality in this Hamilton Project interactive feature.

Explore state-level variation in child exposure to food insecurity over the past decade.

This map shows the average annual percentage of children living in households experiencing very low food security, from 2013-2015. The state averages range from a low of 3.3 percent in Iowa to a high of 9.1 percent in Oklahoma.

This chart shows the average annual percentage of children living in food insecure households in each state from 2013-2015. In 22 states, more than 20 percent of children lived in food insecure households.

Indicators of stress are related to negative health outcomes for individuals. However, it is also interesting to examine the relationship between stress indicators and subjective well-being, or happiness. Are high levels of stress, as measured by available biomarkers, translating into low levels of happiness? Using 2008 data from the Health and Retirement Study, we examine this connection for a variety of measures.

The relative price of housing varies by region; over the past three decades, households in the Northeast and West have experienced rising housing prices relative to other goods, while the opposite is true for households in the Midwest and South.

Over the past three decades, the price of health care has increased dramatically relative to overall prices while the price of clothing has fallen. 

Explore state-level variation in child exposure to food insecurity over the past decade.

In 2014, nearly 60 percent of Americans' tax-preferred retirement savings were held in either IRAs or defined-contribution plans, and only 13 percent were held in private sector traditional pensions (i.e., defined-benefit plans).

This chart presents one widely used measure of financial literacy: the ability to correctly answer three questions about compound interest, inflation, and risk diversification. Fewer than half of Americans can accurately answer these questions.

In 2014 approximately half of nonretired Americans reported being confident that they will have enough money to live comfortably in retirement. 

A full-time secondary earner in a low- or middle-income family takes home less than 50 percent of his or her earnings.

Since about 1980, the growth of single-parent families has been driven almost entirely by an increase in childbearing outside of marriage, often the result of people sliding into relationships and having an unplanned baby.

The U.S. minimum wage now stands at 38 percent of the median wage, the third-lowest among OECD countries.

This chart presents the schedule for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for tax year 2014 and possible adjustments to maximize the impact.

This state-by-state map highlights the ratio of median out-of-pocket child-care costs to median earnings of single mothers with children under age five.

The United States does not currently invest heavily in vocational training compared with other countries, and funding for vocational training has declined over the past decades. The United States spends less than 0.05 percent of its gross domestic product on vocational training opportunities for workers.

This chart illustrates the cumulative risk of imprisonment for parents—or the projected lifetime likelihood of having served time for a person born in a specific year—by the time their child turns fourteen, by child's race and their own educational attainment. Regardless of race, fathers are much more likely to have been imprisoned than are mothers.

For certain demographic groups, incarceration has become a fact of life. There is nearly a 70 percent chance that an African American man without a high school diploma will have been imprisoned by his mid-thirties.

The United States is an international outlier when it comes to incarceration rates. The U.S. incarceration rate—defined as the number of inmates in local jails, state prisons, federal prisons, and privately operated facilities per every 100,000 U.S. residents—is more than six times that of the typical Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) country.

The incarceration rate in the United States—defined as the number of inmates in local jails, state prisons, federal prisons, and privately operated facilities per every 100,000 U.S. residents—increased during the past three decades, from 220 in 1980 to 756 in 2008, before retreating slightly to 710 in 2012.

This chart shows the share of workers earning equal to or less than 150 percent of the minimum wage in every state in 2012. By hovering over a state, you can also see the minimum wage in 2012 in each state.

This figure shows how SNAP has historically tracked rates of unemployment and economic downturns closely (denoted by the teal dotted line and gray bars, respectively). SNAP participation rates (as seen in the shaded blue area) are expected to fall as the economy continues to recover, as would be expected based on the pattern observed in previous recessions.

This figure compares the level of a household’s spending on food to the TFP level for its family size using data from the Consumer Expenditure Surveys from 1989 through 2011.

SNAP benefits are an effective tool for mitigating food insecurity since they increase a family’s ability to purchase food. Hunger in the United States spiked both during and after the Great Recession. In 2012 over 14 percent of all households were food insecure at some point throughout the year. Furthermore, 20 percent of households with children experienced food insecurity.

Household composition of families in the struggling lower-middle class varies substantially from the household composition of families in poverty. The composition of the struggling lower-middle class—defined here as working-age families with children under age eighteen whose income places them between 100 and 250 percent of the FPL—is markedly different from families in poverty in terms of marriage and presence of earners.

This figure displays the percentage of income generated by the addition of a secondary earner’s income that a family takes home after accounting for payroll and federal income taxes, SNAP benefits, and the cost of child care. 

Nearly one out of two families in the struggling lower-middle class is headed by an adult who has attended college. Among household family heads with income between 100 and 250 percent of the FPL, 48 percent have attended some college, and 14 percent have a bachelor’s degree or higher. In stark contrast to those living at or below 250 percent of the FPL, 77 percent of household family heads above 250 percent of the FPL attended at least some college, and about half have a bachelor’s degree or higher.

As shown in this chart, marginal tax rates are highest for those families with income at or above the FPL.

More than half of America’s working-age families with children under age eighteen (approximately 20.1 million families) have annual incomes of $60,000 or below. This is true whether we consider only earned wages and salary, or if we use a broader definition of pretax, pretransfer income, which also includes some unearned sources of income, such as investment income and alimony payments.

In a new chart, The Hamilton Project shows the child food insecurity rates in every state in 2011.

The earnings of college graduates are much higher than for nongraduates, and that is especially true among people born into low-income families. As the figure shows, without a college degree a child born into a family in the lowest quintile has a 45 percent change of remaining in that quintile as an adult and only a 5 percent chance of moving into the highest quintile. 

One significant consequence of growing income inequality is that, by historical standards, high-income households are spending much more on their children’s education than low-income households. This figure shows enrichment expenditures—SAT prep, private tutors, computers, music lessons, and the like—by income level. 

While social mobility and economic opportunity are important aspects of the American ethos, the data suggest they are more myth than reality. In fact, a child’s family income plays a dominant role in determining his or her future income, and those who start out poor are likely to remain poor. This figure shows the chances that a child’s future earnings will place him in the lowest the or the highest quintile depending on where his parents fell in the distribution (from left to right on the figure, the lowest, middle, and highest quintiles). 

Many are concerned that rising income inequality will lead to declining social mobility. This figure, recently coined “The Great Gatsby Curve,” takes data from several countries at a single point in time to show the relationship between inequality and immobility. 

Many workers can benefit substantially from worker training programs, which provide education and skill development that lead to increased economic opportunities and better jobs. Students who earn two-year degrees in a high-return field, four-year degrees after a two-year degree, or certain career-oriented certificates, earn median salaries of $34,000 or more per year. Students who earn two-year degrees in low-return fields or who do not complete their programs earn around 33 percent less. 

The U.S. personal saving rate has declined dramatically over the past several decades and is currently very low by historical standards. Americans saved about 4 percent of after-tax personal income in 2012, down from average saving rates of 5.5 percent in the 1990s, 8.6 percent in the 1980s, and 9.6 percent in the 1970s. 

According to the official poverty measure calculated by the U.S. Census Bureau, prior to the start of the recession in 2007, the poverty rate was only slightly below its 1980 level, and has since climbed to the highest level in over thirty years. Many economists, however, advocate using an alternative measure of poverty, developed by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in the 1990s. This figure compares the two measurements.

Earnings have risen dramatically at the top since 1979—by more than 250 percent for households in the top 1 percent of the income distribution. At the same time, many households at the middle and bottom have experienced stagnating incomes or even declines in earnings. 

Today's out-of-work Americans are experiencing longer spells of unemployment than in any recent recession. In October 2010, half of all unemployed workers had been unemployed for more than 21 weeks.

America is issuing a declining number of visas for high-skill workers.

The United States experienced two waves of immigration over the last century. The first peaked in 1910, while the second stemmed from immigration reform in 1965 and continues today.

Immigration may have a modest positive effect on the average wage of U.S.-born workers.

The fall in employment from the 2007-2009 Great Recession is the most severe fall during a recession since World War II.

This figure from the 2010 Hamilton Project strategy paper "From Recession to Recovery to Renewal" illustrates changes in the male and female nonemployment to population ratio between 1945 and 2010.

Between 1975 and 2008, income inequality in the United States has risen, with households in the 95th percentile of income making disproportionate gains.