Gap Between Higher- and Lower-Wealth Households Widens

       Median net worth increased between 2000 and 2011 for households in the top two quintiles of the net worth distribution (the wealthiest 40 percent), while declining for those in the lower three quintiles (the bottom 60 percent), according to new statistics released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. The result was a widening wealth gap between those at the top and those in the middle and bottom of the net worth distribution. Each quintile represents 20 percent, or one-fifth, of all households.

       “The types of assets that households hold may vary,” Census Bureau economist Alfred Gottschalck said. “Therefore, business cycle changes over time may affect households differently based on their net worth quintile and demographic characteristics.”

      According to  Distribution of Household Wealth in the U.S.: 2000 to 2011 and associated detailed tables, median household net worth decreased by $5,124 for households in the first (bottom) net worth quintile and increased by $61,379 (or 10.8 percent) for those in the highest (top) quintile (Figure 1). Median net worth of households in the highest quintile was 39.8 times higher than the second lowest quintile in 2000, and it rose to 86.8 times higher in 2011. (Figure 2).

Hunger in America 2014

Read the report.

In many ways, America is the land of plenty. But for 1 in 6 people in the United States, hunger is a very real struggle. Many people believe that the problems associated with hunger are confined to small pockets of society, certain areas of the country, or certain neighborhoods, but the reality is much different.

Right now, millions of Americans are at risk of hunger. These are often hard-working adults, children and seniors who simply cannot always make ends meet and may be forced to go without food.

A critical component to a healthy life is nutrition. From birth, the intake of vital nutrients is essential to the growth and development of a healthy individual. Good nutrition, particularly in the first three years of life, is important in establishing and maintaining a good foundation that has implications on a child’s future physical and mental health, academic achievement, and economic productivity. Unfortunately, food insecurity is an obstacle that threatens that critical foundation.

In the United States, more than one out of five children lives in a household with food insecurity, which means they do not always know where they will find their next meal. According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), in 2012, 15.9 million children under 18 in the United States live in this condition – unable to consistently access nutritious and adequate amounts of food necessary for a healthy life.

More from Feeding America.

36 percent not saving for retirement

From Bankrate:

An alarming number of Americans aren't preparing for the day when they'll need to live off their savings.

More than a third of adults say they have not started saving for retirement yet, according to a national poll accompanying Bankrate's monthly Financial Security Index.

Even Americans who are getting close to retirement age seem to be struggling when it comes to planning their financial future. The survey shows that more than a quarter of the respondents age 50 to 64 have yet to start saving for retirement...

While some people aren't even close to being ready for retirement, others say they have been saving since a young age, Bankrate's survey shows.

TradeStats Express: free state and US export data

Get the latest annual and quarterly trade data with TradeStats Express™ from the Census Bureau. Retrieve, visualize, analyze, print and download your customized output.

Includes:

Global Patterns of U.S. Merchandise Trade (example: U.S. Chemical Exports and Imports for All Countries)
Product Profiles of U.S. Merchandise Trade with a Selected Market (example: All Products Traded Between the United States and United Kingdom)

Global Patterns of a State's Exports (example: Exports from Texas to each country)
State-by-State Exports to a Selected Market (example: Exports to Ireland from each state)
Export Product Profile to a Selected Market (example: Products from Texas to Iceland)

Where people were born, by state: an interactive graphic,for 1900-2012

From the New York Times, which charted how Americans have moved between states since 1900. See how your state has changed!


The image of New York as a beacon that attracts all is definitely true for immigrants, but for people born in the United States, the picture is more complicated. With the recent growth in immigration, the percentage of foreign-born residents in New York is approaching Ellis Island days. But domestically, one of the less-noticed trends is the decline in population of blacks born in other states. Since 1980, the population of Southern-born blacks has declined by more than 350,000.

100th Anniversary of Panama Canal Opening: Aug. 15, 1914

In recognition of the centennial of the opening of the Panama Canal to world commerce on Aug. 15, 1914, the Census Bureau presents current data on the population of Panama, Panamanians in the U.S. and U.S. trade with Panama, as well as historical data on the population of the now-defunct Panama Canal Zone.

How many total ancestors do you have?

From the Daily Kos:

Genealogists identify ancestors by following paper trails preserved in archives, €”traditional and digital. Although the goals of genealogists vary, a large pedigree chart is one measure of success. Yet even the most fruitful family trees are unlikely to yield more than a few thousand ancestors.... Yet, as the mathematically-inclined will be quick to point out, one can never find the names of more than a tiny fraction.

So, is an answer possible? I think the beginning of an answer is possible, within certain limits. This is a question for what might be called theoretical genealogy. Like any question of this magnitude, no matter what the discipline, it requires some agreement on definitions. An ancestor is someone who could theoretically been the source of some of your DNA. I say "theoretically," because most of your ancestors could not actually have passed DNA on to you. The probability is too low, since your number of ancestors greatly exceeds your number of genes. So we are counting parents, plus grandparents, plus great-grandparents, etc., until we reach an arbitrary beginning. 10,000 BCE should do nicely, as it puts us at the very beginning of the Anthropocene, the planet's first geologic era caused by us.

Which metro has America's oldest housing stock?

Six New York markets are included on the list of 25 metros with the oldest housing stocks: Buffalo (second), New York City (seventh), Albany (ninth), Rochester (10th), Syracuse (11th) and Poughkeepsie (24th).

The opposite end of the rankings is dominated by Sunbelt metros. Las Vegas has the lowest proportion of old homes, 0.97 percent. Next are three Florida metros -- Cape Coral, Palm Bay and Port St. Lucie -- which are all below 2 percent.

All figures come from the five-year version of the U.S. Census Bureau's 2012 American Community Survey. The bureau defines a housing unit as any dwelling, including free-standing homes, apartments and condominiums.

The national rankings are limited to the 108 metros that contain at least 200,000 units.

From Buffalo Business First.

Robin Williams's death: a reminder that suicide and depression are not selfish

News of Robin Williams’s death due to apparent suicide, said to be a result of suffering severe depression, is terribly sad. But to say taking your own life because of such an illness is a ‘selfish’ act does nothing but insult the deceased, potentially cause more harm and reveal a staggering ignorance of mental health problems.

More from the Guardian.

13 Scientific Terms You Might Be Using Wrong

From Mental Floss:

When scientists use these words, they typically mean something completely different than what they do when non-scientists use them. Sometimes our definitions are too narrow or too broad, and sometimes, we use terms interchangably when they actually shouldn't be. We dug deep into the American Museum of Natural History's website to help set the record straight.

Suicide Contagion and the Reporting of Suicide

From the CDC, 1994:

Suicide rates among adolescents and young adults have increased sharply in recent decades... In comparison with older persons, adolescents and young adults who commit suicide are less likely to be clinically depressed or to have certain other mental disorders (3) that are important risk factors for suicide among persons in all age groups. This has led to research directed at the identification of other preventable risk factors for suicide among young persons.

One risk factor that has emerged from this research is suicide "contagion," a process by which exposure to the suicide or suicidal behavior of one or more persons influences others to commit or attempt suicide. Evidence suggests that the effect of contagion is not confined to suicides occurring in discrete geographic areas. In particular, nonfictional newspaper and television coverage of suicide has been associated with a statistically significant excess of suicides. The effect of contagion appears to be strongest among adolescents, and several well publicized "clusters" among young persons have occurred.

These findings have induced efforts on the part of many suicide-prevention specialists, public health practitioners, and researchers to curtail the reporting of suicide -- especially youth suicide -- in newspapers and on television. Such efforts were often counterproductive, and news articles about suicides were written without the valuable input of well- informed suicide-prevention specialists and others in the community.

Facebook scam: In Farcing, Thieves Ask 'Would You Be My Friend?'

Consider this scenario: You're on Facebook (FB), and you receive two friend requests, both from people you don't know. With one person, you have no mutual friends, and with the other, you have some. Do you accept either request? Both? Just the one who shares your friends?

Scammers are banking on the likelihood you'll accept the request if you have mutual friends -- the more, the better -- even if you have no clue who the requester is. From there, they'll have access to everything you share with friends, and they'll start friending your friends and family to see what they share. All that good stuff helps them reach their ultimate goal: identity theft.

It's called farcing, and a researcher at the University of Buffalo published a study on it in an academic journal called Information Systems Frontier, saying these scams spread quickly and widely, as the scammer gathers friends and appears more legitimate.

More from Daily Financing.

Multiple jobholding in states in 2013

In 2013, the multiple-jobholding rate1 (the percentage of individuals who hold more than one job) in indi­vidual states continued to vary con­siderably from the national average of 4.9 percent, a rate that has been unchanged since 2010. Twenty-three states had multiple-jobholding rates significantly higher than the national average, 8 states had significantly lower rates, and 19 states and the District of Colum­bia had rates that were not significantly different from the U.S. average.

See data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Nonprofits statistics

From National Center for Charitable Statistics:

Nonprofit organizations include everything from neighborhood associations that meet a couple of times a year and have no assets to Harvard University and the Gates Foundation, each with tens of billions in assets. They include soup kitchens and traditional "charities" that serve the poor as well as your local church, the Chamber of Commerce, the Sierra Club, the United Steel Workers labor union, and the Metropolitan Opera. As you can see, there's no "one-size-fits-all" way to think about nonprofit organizations.
So we categorize. Nonprofit organizations can be divided by the subsection of the United States Internal Revenue Code 501(c) under which they fall.

Visit the Table Wizard reporting tool, which will allow you to filter statistics by STATE and COUNTY.

Copyright, Fair Use, and Education

The Copyright Advisory Office of Columbia University has a central mission to address, in a creative and constructive manner, the relationship between copyright law and the work of the university in order to best promote research, teaching, library services, and community involvement.

To that end, the Copyright Advisory Office of Columbia University:

Addresses issues of fair use, copyright ownership, and publishing arrangements in furtherance of higher education and the advancement of knowledge;
Provides copyright information and education resources for the academic community;
Supports innovative policies and practices to foster the creation, preservation, and accessibility of information resources; and
Undertakes research and exploration of copyright issues to provide supportive understandings of the law and its importance to educational institutions and libraries.

Check out this link!

The Mind Unleashed: pseudoscientific clickbait

From The Rational Wiki:

themindunleashed.org is a pseudoscientific, woo-peddling, clickbait website with a propensity to misrepresent data from studies and present it as scientific fact for their own gain. With just a soupçon of bigotry for flavor.

Neither the site itself nor the whois say anything about who owns and runs the place.

United States among the few countries without a guarantee of paid maternity leave.

There are 185 nations studied in the International Labour Organization's report, Maternity and paternity at work. "Oman, New Guinea and the United States are the only ones without a guarantee of paid maternity leave. In the States, if you have worked long enough for a company with 50 or more employees, you get 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a newborn, adopted or foster child. Only in California, New Jersey and Rhode Island is any provision made for paid leave in these circumstances."

Read more in the Daily Kos.

Regulation of Bitcoin in Selected Jurisdictions

Source: Library of Congress


This report surveys forty foreign jurisdictions and the European Union, reporting on any regulations or statements from central banks or government offices on the handling of bitcoins as well as any significant use of bitcoins in business transactions. Topics covered include whether bitcoins are recognized as legal tender, the possibility of negative impacts on the national currency, concerns about fraud, and how transactions using the Bitcoin system are viewed by tax authorities.

Of those countries surveyed, only a very few, notably China and Brazil, have specific regulations applicable to bitcoin use. There is widespread concern about the Bitcoin system’s possible impact on national currencies, its potential for criminal misuse, and the implications of its use for taxation. Overall, the findings of this report reveal that the debate over how to deal with this new virtual currency is still in its infancy.

June 2014 update

Dancing statistics: explaining the statistical concept of correlation through dance

A four minute film demonstrating the statistical concept of correlation through dance.

Project title: 'Communicating Psychology to the Public through Dance' (AKA 'Dancing Statistics')

Founder & Co-Producer: Lucy Irving
Project Manager & Co-Producer: Elise Phillips
Statistical Lead & Co-Producer: Professor Andy Field
Choreographer: Masha Gurina
Filmmaker: Kyle Stevenson

These films were funded by a BPS Public Engagement with additional funding from IdeasTap.

How much do you know about the laws that govern us? And have you ever wanted to know exactly what they say?
The “Laws and Regulations” page at usa.gov is a good place to find out. Get details on recent laws like the Affordable Care Act, or laws that differ from state to state like gun regulations. You can also see bills that have been introduced in Congress and learn how to get involved and contact your elected officials.