American Inequality

Micah Lasher is set to become the next Congressman for NY12, and he has a strong vision about what he needs to accomplish in politics. He knows that we need more housing, better healthcare, a higher minimum wage, and better schools for our children, but the ways to actual accomplish those goals require a new way of looking at things and a deep understanding of the data that reveals what might realistically work. Micah’s perspective is to look across these issues and recognize that they are part of an interconnected story on affordability, opportunity, and living up to our ideals. Let me and Micah know what you think in the comments.

[00:00 - 03:45] The Breakdown of the American Social Compact

At every critical inflection point in the economic life of everyday Americans, predictability and safety have completely evaporated. From crippling college debt and skyrocketing rent to the crushing costs of early parenthood, working families are getting relentlessly squeezed. Political parties cannot win elections without making a bold, clear argument that directly matches the massive scale of voter anxiety. The ascendant political left is succeeding because it dares to call out a broken economic compact while mainstream establishment figures hesitate. Rebuilding durable political support requires delivering audacious, structural solutions that fundamentally repair the social fabric of the nation.

[03:45 - 07:30] Transit-Oriented Development and the Abundance Agenda

Tackling the crippling cost of living demands an aggressive intersection between transit investments and housing creation. Major regional infrastructure projects like New York’s Interboro Express represent transformative leaps forward in urban transit connectivity. Unlocking housing supply around transit hubs frees working families from the heavy financial weight of car ownership while keeping them proximate to jobs. Leaders must embrace an abundance agenda that pairs direct public housing investment with massive supply expansion. By mandating upzoning around transit stations, state leaders can prevent parochial local politics from blocking affordable regional growth.

[07:30 - 11:15] Dismantling Federal Barriers to Public Housing

Decades of deliberate federal underinvestment have artificially strangled the growth of public housing across the nation. The legacy of the Faircloth Amendment effectively banned net increases in public housing, crippling federal support when families needed it most. Public housing in major metropolitan areas preserves essential socioeconomic diversity, offering hundreds of thousands of working citizens a place to live. Arbitrary federal limitations on building social infrastructure must be repealed to confront the modern affordability crisis head-on. Government must step back into the business of directly funding dignified homes for everyday workers who keep our cities running.

11:15 - 15:45] Connecting the Housing Crisis to Mental Health and Homelessness

Severe housing shortages leave vulnerable citizens completely without a seat in the brutal game of economic musical chairs. Mass homelessness is fundamentally a housing supply problem, inextricably linked to the broader affordability crisis. Decades of reckless deinstitutionalization dissolved public mental health networks without building the promised community continuum of care. Rebuilding care networks requires urgent, multi-billion-dollar state investments in psychiatric beds, supportive housing, and competitive healthcare wages. Compassionate governance requires closing the devastating gap between physical shelter and comprehensive mental health support.

[15:45 - 20:15] Pragmatic Execution and Bold Political Action

Public leaders cannot afford the luxury of doing nothing while waiting to find a way to do everything. Navigating overwhelming societal crises requires isolating discrete, actionable problems and enforcing hard policy choices with real teeth. When major hospital systems flouted orders to restore crucial psychiatric beds, enforcing unprecedented administrative fines forced rapid compliance. Sweeping legislative reforms mean little without the executive courage to pull unexamined political levers. True progress is forged by combining big policy visions with relentless, brass-tacks operational grit.

[20:15 - 24:45] Overcoming Educational Segregation and Systemic Failure

America’s public education discourse has drifted dangerously away from a coherent, inspiring theory of systemic change. Hyper-segregation continues to plague metropolitan school systems, failing children despite substantial per-pupil funding allocations. Defending a unified public school system demands confronting steep enrollment declines alongside deep-seated neighborhood divides. Targeted investments in early childhood prekindergarten and proven phonics methodologies offer transformative pathways for youth. Courageous leadership across all levels of government must boldly realign educational resources to guarantee every student a common foundation.

[24:45 - 29:30] Closing the Capital-Labor Divide and Living Wage Reform

A stagnant federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour represents an unconscionable betrayal of working Americans. For tipped workers earning a paltry $2.13 base wage, current statutory systems guarantee economic vulnerability. Indexing state minimum wages to inflation strips away political gamesmanship while ensuring working families keep pace with living costs. The widening chasm between exploding capital gains and lagging earned income forms a dangerous “alligator mouth” chart tearing at national stability. Raising the national wage floor is an indispensable moral baseline for any government committed to economic justice.

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The American housing crisis is buckling under a new weight. As soaring rents grab headlines, insurance premiums and property taxes have been slowly rising to astronomical heights, making housing affordability all but impossible. Insurers blame climate risks for heightened costs, yet new disclosures show these companies are retaining a record share of margins rather than paying out claims.

Core housing rent inflation increased thirty percent from 2018 to 2024, adding significant stress to families across the country. But new reports show insurance premiums rose 71 percent over that period, climbing more than twice as fast and contributing to thousands in annual costs. Home insurance now makes up more than 10 percent of the cost of a monthly mortgage, up from five percent twenty years ago. Those costs are typically passed from landlords onto renters.

Insurance premiums aren’t the only hidden overhead driving up non-negotiable costs. Property tax bills are now rising far faster than inflation, costing the average American an extra $4,500 per year. To combat these costs, four states have ballot initiatives this November to limit or rollback property tax expenses, adding to a group of 10 states that issued changes since last year.

Nowhere is this crisis clearer than in New York City. A recent municipal proposal from the Mayor and the New York City Economic Development Corporation revealed a startling relationship — every $100 increase in property insurance costs requires an additional $1,200 in city capital subsidies to keep public housing units affordable. In effect, the cost of covering the higher insurance prices results in a smaller pool of long-term capital available to the city. “We cannot take on the housing crisis without confronting one of the fastest-growing costs facing New Yorkers: insurance,” said Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

New York City is also losing insurance companies at an alarming rate. These companies cite rising costs from extreme weather, climate risks, and skyrocketing claims costs that make their business untenable. When Adirondack Insurance Exchange and its subsidiary Mountain Valley Indemnity left New York in 2024, spokespeople for the companies pointed to climate events as key drivers. Tens of thousands of New Yorkers lost insurance in turn.

But a new report from Vanderbilt Law School shows that insurance companies are paying out less in claims than ever before and pocketing a far greater share of premiums. Climate matters less than these companies lead us to believe.

One of the clearest ways to see this is a key metric that the insurance tracks called, The Loss Ratio. The closer the loss ratio is to 100 the fairer prices are for consumers.

But over the last two decades, loss ratios have plummeted from their historical average of 80 to just 55 in 2025. This loss ratio means home insurance companies are pocketing roughly half of the money that homeowners are paying in.

“In 2024-2025, years when the news has been riddled with stories about how climate change needs to be increasing insurance rates, we’re seeing some of the lowest loss ratios we’ve ever seen,” said Brian Shearer, the lead researcher on the Vanderbilt report. “The insurance industry is price-gouging the crisis.”

For low-income renters, the fallout from these rising costs is devastating. Average insurance rates for buildings in New York City with affordable apartments more than doubled between 2019 and 2023. Last year, average insurance costs spiked by 10.5 percent for owners of rent-stabilized apartment buildings. Landlords often pass those costs onto renters or force the city to pick up the bill.

Nearly half a million New York homeowners, or about five percent, decided to forgo carrying property insurance due to its expense. Multiple court cases have found that insurance companies have denied coverage to low-income households or price gouged others who were using vouchers.

The five biggest home-insurers didn’t pay out on 44 percent of claims resolved last year, forcing homeowners and renters to fund repairs out of their own pockets.

“I’ve found 16 private jets that the top 10 property and casualty insurers own,” said Mr. Shearer. “State Farm purchased all four of their jets in a 12-month period in 2023 and 2024, when they were also simultaneously telling states like California that if they didn’t let them increase their prices, they would leave.”

Property insurance companies received $1.03 trillion in premiums last year, the highest value ever, or more than the entire U.S. military budget.

At a time when Mr. Mamdani is trying to lower home insurance costs, he is seeking to raise property taxes on non-primary residential properties. The pied-à-terre tax would apply to 17,000 secondary homes and raise between $340-$500 million to close the budget gap and support affordable housing measures. The mayor aims to shift rising property insurance and tax burdens away from struggling families and onto high earners who can afford them.

All of this comes at a time where income inequality in NYC has reached new heights, outpacing the entire rest of the nation. Since 2019, nearly two-thirds of real income growth went to the top 1%, while median income actually fell after inflation and the bottom 90% saw essentially no real gains. Among the top 1%, non-wage income (capital gains, dividends, etc) increased from 64% of total income in 2019 to 69% in 2024. The top 0.1% (about 5,000 households) received 22% of all NYC income, approximately double what is seen nationally.

New York City cannot build its way out of a housing crisis if excessive costs are eating away at the foundation. As insurance companies use climate risk as cover to expand profit margins and as property taxes soar to fill strained municipal budgets, low-income families are left to bear the collapse. Communities need to bring these often invisible costs under control and hold the underwriters accountable to the neighborhoods they leave exposed.

INTERESTING ON THE WEB

* We’re working on a new series called Charts that Explain the World. We’ll share more soon but check out our first 2 posts - No1, No2, and No3

* American Inequality has joined Democracy Portfolios alongside Qasim Rashid, Esq. to improve coverage of equity, justice, and civic life as newsrooms shrink - Democracy Portfolios

* I sat down for an interview with the Weekly Anthropocene - interview

* New Acemoglu paper showing that when firms hire MBAs into senior managerial or CEO positions that in the next 5 year worker wages decline by 6% and the labor share falls by 5 percentage points - NBER

What I’m reading

I’ve really been enjoying Chris Kelly’s new book A Solution to Wealth Inequality. The premise of the book is that we need to convince the ultra wealthy that addressing inequality is in their interest and that demonizing them is not the way to get them to change their ways. Chris believes in the power of persuasion to get this done, and that this can be a practical and impactful way to address inequality in a time when political polarization (and highly influential moneyed interest in politics) prevail. It is a strong appeal and can be a powerful tool in the arsenal. You can check it out here.

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Amanda Litman is the co-founder of Run For Something, which is the largest pro-Democracy pipeline in American politics, helping more than 280,000 people who have considered running for office. Amanda is helping to empower the next generation of leaders to advocate for issues around affordability, housing, inequality, justice, and making a real impact in communities instead of just talking about ideology.

If you know someone who should run for office or should hear more from Amanda, send them this video and tell them to join.

The Crisis of the Gerontocracy [00:00 - 06:45] American politics is currently gripped by a historical deviation where the average age of Congress is nearly 60, leaving a massive representation gap for the next generation. While previous eras saw leadership ages dip, we are now ruled by a “boomer” status quo that has dominated the presidency for nearly three decades. Run for Something is aggressively disrupting this trend by exclusively backing candidates 40 and under who are ready to trade “waiting their turn” for leading right now. These young leaders aren’t just new faces; they are the necessary response to a political system that has become a retirement home for the powerful. It is time to stop defending positions of power and start making a compelling argument for the future.

The Knowledge Gap and Modern Reality [06:45 - 11:30] There is a dangerous disconnect when the people regulating our future, like Jim Clyburn, admit they only learned about tools like ChatGPT a week ago. This isn’t just about tech; it’s about a leadership class that hasn’t paid a childcare bill or a rental deposit in over half a century. For a young parent, childcare is no longer an “issue”—it is a second mortgage payment that makes the American Dream feel like a hallucination. We don’t need moral superiority from our leaders; we need the functional competence to understand the sticker shock of modern life. When our representatives are out of touch with the basic economics of being a 20-something, the legislation they pass will never meet the moment.

Impact Over Ideology [16:20 - 24:10] The most successful candidates have realized that voters don’t go to the polls to support a rigid ideology; they vote for the person who will make their lives suck less. Most people aren’t looking for a political philosopher; they want someone who will fix the brown water in their taps and pave the potholes in their streets. High-level pundits try to “puppet master” the electorate with Mad Libs consulting, but voters are smarter than the scripts we give them. Real change happens when we stop talking about abstract “democracy” and start talking about the dignity of a well-funded school or a safe sidewalk. If you want to win, stop selling a “product” and start solving the problems people can see and feel every single day.

The Generational Housing Warfare [24:10 - 32:45] Housing has become the front line of a modern generational war, serving as the single biggest nut to crack in the affordability crisis. While millions of young renters feel locked out of generational wealth, our tax codes continue to privilege homeowners over those just trying to survive the month. We are facing a surreal reality where 19 million people live in overcrowded homes while millions of empty bedrooms sit unused in houses owned by boomers with no incentive to downsize. This isn’t just an economic hiccup; it is a systemic failure that is driving young people toward high-risk gambling and crypto out of pure desperation. To fix inequality, we must name the tension: you cannot have affordable housing while treating homes as the primary vault for generational equity.

Winning the Digital Gatekeepers [32:45 - 40:00] The next generation of voter contact isn’t happening on a doorstep; it’s happening in the quiet conversation between a voter and an AI chatbot. As people increasingly snap photos of their ballots and ask robots who to vote for, candidates must ensure their true message isn’t lost in the algorithm. Tools like Campsite are helping pro-democracy candidates fight misinformation by making sure their actual policy positions are what the “robots” ingest and repeat. AI actually loves nuance and deep-dive policy papers, forcing candidates to put more substance into the digital echo chamber. We cannot ignore these new surfaces; we have to meet voters exactly where they are getting their information, even if that place is a chat window.

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Success isn’t a substitute for giving. 91% of ultra wealthy households used to donate to charity, but now only 81% do. I sat down with David Roberts to address the causes and consequences of declining philanthropy. Even in an age of tremendous wealthy accumulation, modern titans of industry seem to have traded the moral weight of their ancestors for the hollow vanity of the Forbes 400. Ultimately, the path forward requires dismantling the legal loopholes that prioritize the few over the many to ensure the American dream remains more than just a relic of the past.

* My recent article, Why Philanthropy is Silent in the Golden Age of Wealth

* David’s recent article, A Man Who Dies Rich Dies In Disgrace

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Transcription summary from NotebookLM.

0:00 - The Death of Duty

We have traded the moral weight of the first Gilded Age for a secular scorecard where wealth is the only metric that matters. Unlike Carnegie or Rockefeller, today’s titans lack the religious fervor that once commanded them to give back or face the flames of judgment. In our modern metric-oriented society, billionaires watch their ranking on the Forbes 400 like authors obsessing over subscriber counts. Wealth has become an end in itself, stripped of the historic expectation that the ultra-rich must serve as moral role models. To whom much is given, it seems, nothing is currently expected.

3:00 - Marketplaces Aren’t Miracles

Building a global marketplace or launching rockets to Mars should never be a hall pass for avoiding philanthropy. While we can applaud entrepreneurial brilliance, we must ask why that success is not twinned with behavior that serves the public good. Being a single-minded entrepreneur is one thing, but it does not automatically make someone a compass for the next generation. Wealth should not just be about personal “looks maxing” or individual attributes; it requires a sense of responsibility to the human family. True leadership demands more than just a massive payroll—it requires a soul.

4:45 - The Personal Math of Justice

Tracking your spending is not just about financial planning; it is a reflection of your values and your vision for the world. For every $2.50 spent on family, there should be a dollar dedicated to repairing the fraying edges of our society. Giving is not merely a transaction of cash; it is an investment of time, networks, and the skills built over a lifetime. This is not just charity; it is a pursuit of justice that connects us to our ancestors and our future grandchildren. When you back grassroots leaders at a local food pantry, you are not just giving money—you are fueling a more hopeful future.

11:00 - The Philanthropy Power Trap

We have entered a dangerous era where billionaires get to play God with global health and social priorities. While eradicating malaria is a triumph, the public never voted for it, and we should not rely on the whims of the ultra-wealthy to fix our world. Government triumphs like PEPFAR prove that stable, elected institutions can save millions without waiting for a donor’s permission. When the social safety net is left to private “pet causes,” we risk leaving massive holes where public funding once stood. Philanthropy is a powerful tool, but it should never be a replacement for a functioning, accountable democracy.

15:00 - Closing the Billionaire Loophole

To save the social safety net, we must dismantle the legal loopholes that allow extreme wealth to remain untaxed across generations. It is time to tax capital gains at the same rate as the hard-earned wages of every other American. Ending the “stepped-up basis” ensures that massive fortunes finally contribute to the country that made their accumulation possible. We need a federal tax system that prioritizes the many over the few to avoid a fiscal catastrophe. Paying taxes is the ultimate incentive for a society that wants to see every citizen succeed.

Question for the comments: What are some of the most frustrating parts about how government operationalizes the social safety net or nonprofits execute their missions? Is the tax system incentivizing the right actions?

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I was thrilled to speak with Doug Gordon of The War on Cars to explore the intersection of transportation, urban design, and social inequality. Below is a summary of our discussion. Leave your comments below and we’ll be sure to respond.

Doug’s new book is available here

The Normalization of Car Deaths (00:00 – 05:40)

Jeremy Ney and Doug Gordon begin by discussing how car fatalities have become a “standard American unit of mortality,” a metric against which other crises like gun violence or opioid deaths are measured. Gordon highlights a problematic form of “American exceptionalism,” noting that the U.S. has twice the per capita car deaths of other developed nations. He argues that the financial barrier to full societal participation is excessively high, with a new car costing roughly $50,000 plus significant monthly expenses. This framework establishes car-related deaths as an accepted “cost of doing business,” a notion that Gordon believes must be challenged to address deeper social inequality. By treating car deaths as a fixed reality rather than a policy choice, society fails to pursue “common sense car reform”.

Parking as an Invisible Economic Force (05:40 – 12:40)

The conversation shifts to how parking requirements and zoning laws dictate the design and cost of American urban life. Drawing on the work of economist Donald Shupe, Gordon explains that mandatory parking minimums for buildings are often based on “voodoo science” rather than actual necessity. These requirements drive up housing costs for everyone and increase the price of basic goods because businesses must pay for massive, taxed parking real estate. Furthermore, this over-allocation of space for cars creates a hostile environment for walking or cycling, often forcing people into car dependency for even short trips. Gordon advocates for market-based solutions where developers, rather than government mandates, decide how much parking is truly needed.

Environmental Injustice and the “Geometry Problem” (12:40 – 20:30)

Gordon critiques the idea that electric vehicles (EVs) are a complete solution, noting that they do not solve traffic or eliminate particulate pollution from tire and brake wear. He describes transportation as a “geometry problem” where the sheer physical space cars occupy remains the primary issue in dense urban centers. This system disproportionately harms low-income and minority communities, which are frequently situated near major highways, leading to higher rates of respiratory issues like asthma. Ultimately, the speakers argue that breathing clean air should not be a “luxury item” reserved for those who can afford homes in low-traffic areas. According to Gordon, the only real solution to traffic is providing viable alternatives to driving.

Revitalizing Public Transit and the Bus Constituency (21:00 – 27:50)

The discussion highlights the potential of bus systems as a low-cost, high-reward solution to urban congestion if they are prioritized over private vehicles. While there is a debate over making buses free, Gordon emphasizes that riders often value speed and reliability over cost. He champions the idea of viewing bus riders—who are often lower-income, older, or disabled—as a vital political constituency that deserves dignity and efficient service. By implementing dedicated bus lanes and signal priority, cities can provide a genuine alternative to driving and address the fundamental inequity of a single luxury vehicle blocking a bus filled with fifty people. Gordon suggests that simply centering bus riders in political conversations is a major win for equity.

Using Friction to Transform Urban Spaces (28:00 – 38:20)

The speakers examine the city of Gent, Belgium, as a successful model for reducing traffic through the intentional use of “friction”. By dividing the city into zones and preventing drivers from using the city center as a shortcut, Gent significantly decreased pollution and reached its 2030 cycling goals years ahead of schedule. Gordon suggests that New York could adopt similar strategies, such as congestion pricing, to reclaim a “spatial dividend” for bike lanes and pedestrian plazas. This approach shifts the default from driving to more efficient modes of transport by making the choice to drive a more conscious and time-consuming decision. This helps balance the needs of the “invisible underclass” of transit users against the vocal complaints of drivers.

The Decline of Independent Mobility for Children (38:20 – 44:00)

In the final portion of the talk, the speakers reflect on the dramatic decline in children’s independent mobility over the last fifty years. Statistics show that the percentage of American children walking or biking to school has dropped from 40% in 1969 to less than 11% today. This shift is attributed to institutional changes in community design, such as urban sprawl and the placement of schools near dangerous, high-speed arterial roads. Gordon emphasizes that this is not a failure of parenting, but a result of building a world that prioritizes driver mentality and large SUVs over the safety of children. He concludes that our modern infrastructure creates “scars on communities” by failing to be cognizant of the lived environment.

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14 million Americans live with serious mental illnesses, but few of their stories are told or known. Thank you to Jay and Sean for sharing their brilliant insights on lived experiences navigating housing and mental health resources in New York City and beyond. You can learn more about Fountain House here and see what NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani has to say about the impactful organization.

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0:00-6:00: Introduction to Fountain House and the Clubhouse Model Jeremy Ney introduces Jay and Sean from Fountain House, an organization founded in 1948 in New York City to support people with serious mental illness (SMI). Jay explains that the clubhouse model emerged during the deinstitutionalization movement of the 1950s when patients released from psychiatric institutions found themselves without social ties or resources. These founding members created an intentional community to overcome the exclusion often faced by those with disabilities in traditional social clubs. The model focuses on creating a sense of belonging and reintegrating individuals into society through shared social and professional support systems.

6:00-11:00: The Philosophy of Member-Led Recovery The clubhouse philosophy emphasizes an egalitarian, non-hierarchical environment where members and staff work side-by-side to manage the organization. Jay describes the “work-ordered day,” which allows members to choose tasks such as culinary work, beautification, or administration to drive their own recovery. This approach differs from clinical models that label people as “clients” and enforce a power structure through medication management and coercion. Clubhouses are intentionally understaffed so that members feel needed, encouraging them to focus on their talents rather than their diagnoses.

11:00-18:00: Barriers in Supportive Housing and Discrimination Sean shares his personal experience navigating the New York City housing system, noting that he was initially denied housing due to his sexual orientation. He explains that supportive housing is severely underfunded, with only about 20% of eligible individuals actually receiving a placement. Many applicants are rejected “out of hand” by private providers who may view them as “too disabled,” though the city fails to track this specific data. Sean highlights that these discriminatory practices often leave those approved for housing trapped on the streets or in the subway system.

18:00-25:00: Stigma and the Impact of NIMBYism The conversation addresses how “NIMBYism” and public backlash frequently block the development of housing for people with mental illness. Jay notes that this resistance is often rooted in media-driven stereotypes that falsely portray those with SMI as inherently violent or criminal. Sean cites studies showing that a majority of Americans perceive people with SMI as dangerous, which fuels a desire to exclude them from residential neighborhoods. He argues that zoning laws are effectively weaponized to keep people like him out of communities, prioritizing exclusion over addressing the housing supply.

25:00-31:00: The “Third Rail” of Advocacy and Political Invisibility Sean observes that psychiatric disability has become the “third rail” of politics, often excluded from broader homelessness advocacy to avoid “contaminating” more sympathetic groups like veterans. He critiques current policy proposals that resemble “internment camps” focused on banishment rather than integration. This invisibility leads to a lack of mass protest against the erosion of civil rights for those with mental health conditions. Jeremy notes that it is often easier for society to turn a blind eye than to tackle the intersection of healthcare and housing head-on.

31:00-39:00: The Economic Cost of Institutionalization The speakers highlight the fiscal perversity of current systems, where massive amounts of public funding are spent on jails and shelters instead of supportive housing. Sean points out that while his rental subsidy costs about $28,000 annually, a bed at Rikers Island costs an order of magnitude greater. Despite these costs, the “Housing First” model has been politically delegitimized by right-wing think tanks in favor of more expensive, supervised models. Jay adds that transitional housing often fails because case managers are frequently inept at helping clients navigate complex social service benefits.

39:00-48:00: Paths Forward and Integration Strategies For a path forward, Jay emphasizes the need to incorporate the lived experiences of those with SMI into the development of all social and health policies. Sean suggests that the Justice Department must begin prosecuting communities that violate the ADA by illegally excluding people with mental illness from residential areas. Both guests agree that deep-seated stigma can only be truly alleviated through personal contact and successful integration into neighborhoods. Jeremy concludes that while the challenge is a “heavy lift,” scaling the clubhouse model offers a proven way to reduce social costs and improve lives.

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1 year ago this month, more than 8,000 government websites went dark in an effort to remove key public data and reports. In 2026, Dozens of datasets are still unavailable. I spoke with Denice Ross, the former U.S. Chief Data Scientist, about what this means for public policy in America and what we can all do to address these concerns for transparency, accountability, and effective decision making.

00:00:00 – Introduction and Early Career in New Orleans

The conversation begins with Jeremy welcoming Denise Ross, former Chief Data Scientist of the United States. Ross explains that she started her career as a web designer in the late 90s and moved to New Orleans around 2000 to help democratize data from the 2000 decennial census. Her goal was to move data from behind closed doors and into the hands of communities so they could advocate for their own destinies rather than relying on statisticians in power.

00:01:22 – Addressing Disparities Before the Storm

Ross describes the four years leading up to Hurricane Katrina, during which her team built local capacity for nonprofits and City Hall to use data for grant writing and funding. She emphasizes that while New Orleans might look like a typical city on the surface, disaggregating data by geography and demographics revealed incredible disparities. This effort was a process of “begging” people to use data in a city where decisions were traditionally made based on personal connections rather than empirical evidence.

00:02:21 – Data Needs During the Katrina Catastrophe

When Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, a failure in federal infrastructure caused flooding in 80% of the city, making all existing data instantly historical. As the old ways of making decisions were no longer viable, the city was “flying blind” and needed “good intel” to handle a surge of urgent decisions. Ross explains that she worked for a local data intermediary nonprofit that was inundated with questions about population locations, where to place temporary health clinics, and which parks needed the most urgent cleanup from toxic sludge.

00:03:04 – Seeking Answers from the Census Bureau

Ross recounts her journey to Washington D.C. shortly after the storm to ask the Census Bureau for a “special count” of New Orleans’ remaining residents. She learned that while cities can pay for a special census, it is an onerous and expensive process that would not have worked because the population was changing too rapidly. Instead, the Bureau provided technical assistance for a local survey of occupied houses, which revealed that people were commuting in to work on their homes during the day but leaving at night to sleep.

00:05:24 – The Birth of Open Data Advocacy

A formative moment for Ross occurred when she realized the daytime and nighttime population survey data was not made public; instead, it was shared only as a PDF for a small list of officials. She occasionally had to obtain “black market” versions of the PDF, despite there being no logical reason to keep the data secret. This lack of transparency, occurring before the open data movement was solidified by the Obama administration, highlighted the limitations of federal statistics in rapidly changing situations.

00:06:13 – Creative Proxy Data and Private Sector Solutions

To answer urgent repopulation questions, Ross’s team turned to proxy data, including nighttime lights, traffic patterns, and utility hookups. They discovered that the most accurate proxy came from a junk mail company that purchased and improved U.S. Postal Service data to avoid mailing empty houses. By aggregating this data at the block level, they could show repopulation progress monthly, helping nonprofits identify “tipping point” blocks to avoid the “jack-o’-lantern effect” where repopulation is too scattered to support infrastructure.

00:08:06 – The Rise of “Dearly Departed Data Sets”

The discussion shifts to Ross’s current work tracking the loss of government data, which she calls “dearly departed data sets”. About a year prior to the interview, thousands of government websites went dark, leading to the removal or scrubbing of data related to DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), gender, and climate. Ross notes that while some data returned, it was often handled with “sloppy” methodology, such as changing column headers from “gender” to “sex” without updating the accompanying documentation.

00:10:55 – “Death by a Thousand Cuts”

Ross identifies a second, more subtle bucket of damage she calls “death by a thousand cuts,” which involves the loss of staffing and contracts necessary to maintain data collections. This degradation includes the termination of scientific advisory committees and a bottlenecking of government business due to new requirements for political approval for even basic contracts. This “gumming of the works” makes it difficult to track which data sets are suffering because the decline is slow and lacks flashy headlines.

00:14:37 – Specific Data Losses and Political Implications

A third category of data damage involves removing information that might suggest administration policies are failing. A primary example is the USDA food security supplement, which was canceled just as millions of Americans were losing food stamp eligibility. This data set had provided a 30-year record of whether adults and children had enough healthy food, and its loss sets a worrying precedent for canceling any data that reflects poorly on the government.

00:17:59 – Official Federal Statistics vs. Private Data

Ross addresses arguments regarding cost-cutting and the use of private sector data as a replacement for government surveys. While the private sector provided stopgap numbers during government shutdowns, those entities admitted they still depend on official federal statistics. Ross emphasizes that there is a constant tension between timeliness and quality; while private indices like the Real-Time Crime Index are useful for quick estimates, they cannot replace the robust, quality-checked data from the FBI or other federal agencies.

00:20:07 – Data Disaggregation as a Tool for Equity

A key attribute of American data is the commitment to disaggregation, which allows users to see disparities by race, income, and geography. As Chief Data Scientist, Ross worked to increase the capacity of federal agencies to slice data to see how policies were affecting different segments of the population. This “eyes wide open” approach was vital for identifying communities in the Appalachia and tribal nations that were not receiving fair distributions of investment.

00:25:33 – Risks of Obfuscating National Health Data

Ross notes a concerning trend where the CDC’s infant and maternal mortality data is no longer aggregated at the national level, existing only in disparate state reports. This change followed the firing of all 17 staff members in that office, introducing massive friction for researchers who must now manually calculate national figures. Ross argues that while states and civil society can try to act as a “heart-lung machine” to keep these collections alive, this is a function that belongs inside the federal government.

00:30:46 – The Weaponization of Shared Data

The conversation touches on the Paperwork Reduction Act and the desire for more efficient data sharing across agencies. Ross warns that this efficiency can be a double-edged sword; if data collected for Medicaid or SNAP is shared with ICE for immigration enforcement, it has a “chilling effect” on the entire ecosystem. This distrust leads to lower survey response rates and decreased participation in essential services, creating a downward cycle of under-investment in vulnerable communities.

00:33:12 – Initiatives to Safeguard Data Infrastructure

Ross describes her current initiatives, including the website EssentialData.us, which features nearly 100 use cases showing how federal data benefits everyday Americans. She also mentions DataIndex.us, a newsletter that monitors obscure websites for opportunities for public input on data changes. These efforts are designed to turn data users into data advocates, ensuring that federal data stewards receive feedback on the value of the information they maintain.

00:38:57 – Invisible Data Impact: From Bats to Peanut Butter

In her closing remarks, Ross highlights how data touches lives in unseen ways, such as the Consumer Product Safety Commission API that allows grocery stores to automatically email customers about salmonella recalls. Her favorite dataset is the North American Bat Monitoring Database, which is critical for the economy because bats provide billions of dollars in free pest control for farmers. Research shows that when bat populations decline, infant mortality rises because farmers use more pesticides, demonstrating the deep, often hidden connections between data and human health.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://americaninequality.substack.com/subscribe

Thank you for tuning into my live video with Leah Libresco Sargeant and Dustin Palmer! We had a great time discussing the impact of the $6.25 billion direct cash program that is going to offer $250 to millions of children. Baby bonds, baby bonuses, and the power of cash can be instrumental in altering the course of a person’s life. Let us know your thoughts in the comments about some points that resonated with you and any other open questions you have.

American Inequality is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://americaninequality.substack.com/subscribe

INTERESTING ON THE WEB:

* 📝 Free file is gone and I’m heartbroken about it - WSJ

* 💾 These data centers are getting really, really big - Distilled Michael Thomas

* 📊 7 data-driven lessons from the 2025 elections - Strength in Numbers G. Elliott Morris

* 🥈We’re number 2 (and how we’ve lost to China) - Yale Budget Lab Paul Krugman

I recently did an interview with John Stossel to discuss whether things are tougher for young people today than they were 50 years ago. Stossel is a former Fox News, ABC, and 20/20 anchor and so I knew I would get some pointed questions, and at the very least, his famous “You’re wroooong!” On the other side of the debate from me was Norbert Michel from the Cato Institute, the conservative/libertarian think-tank founded by Charles Koch. I loved debate in high school. I would travel to DC and Philadelphia for various debate tournaments and I kept up with it in college for a bit too. Two of the most important lessons that I learned in debate were to (1) respect other people’s ideas and arguments; and (2) know what your opposition is going to say before they say it.

In this debate, I took the position that ‘yes’ the economy is worse today for young people than it was for their parents for the following reasons:

* Baby boomers had a 90% chance of earning more than their parents. Millennials had just a 50% chance.

* The average cost of college for public and private tuition is 3x higher today than in 1973

* The average millennial has 30% less wealth at age 35 than boomers at the same age

* At age 30, only 38% of college-educated millennials owned a home, which was less than the 54% of similarly educated baby boomers at the same age and also.

* The cost of childcare has more than doubled from 1985 to today even when adjusting for inflation.

And while I didn’t include it in our conversation back then, millions of Americans (many of whom are children) are going hungry as the government plays poker with their food support, and millions more still have seen their healthcare premium payments double. The current pain is very real.

But in my research I also prepped the other side of the argument. I wanted to know all the data on the ways the world had gotten better and why we should also be both hopeful about the state of the world today. There is a lot of darkness around us, and there is no doubt that we are living in an age of tremendous inequality. For half of the people in the US it feels like the American Dream is impossible to achieve. But the reason that the conversation was set up as a debate is because there have been incredible improvements in America. While my focus tends to be on the current state of the world - with a particular lens on regional divides - the historical perspective going back to the 1970s shows that we have in fact seen some tremendous gains along certain measures. America isn’t perfect, but I hope there’s a bit of brightness in here for everyone.

Environmental improvements

Environmental quality has improved tremendously thanks to the Clean Air Act — air pollution is down by70% since 1970. Carbon monoxide levels have fallen 78%, largely due to cars and trucks making 10x improvements in pollution emotions. Even as the U.S. population has grown by 130 million people since 1970 - requiring more homes, cars, streets, and plane travel - our per capita CO2 emissions have fallen by 35.6%. In 1970, the US was producing 29 out of every 100 tons of CO2 pumped into their environment. Today, it is just 13 (largely as the US has swapped spots with China as being the world’s leading polluter).

Particulate matter 2.5 (the most important measure of pollution that tracks large particles which can get stuck in your lungs and deteriorate your health) has fallen 32.6% since 1990. Chlorofluorocarbons, a chemical often referred to as ‘the O-zone killer’, have nearly disappeared from most manufacturing processes.

Life expectancy

The very first article I wrote for the American Inequality Substack was about the 20 year gap in life expectancies across regions in the nation, and while anyone who knows my writing knows that I despise a national narrative because it masks what is happening in communities, it is still acknowledging that nearly every region has experienced huge gains in life expectancy since the 1970s. Life expectancy has increased by almost a year and a half for every decade since 1970 (which makes you wonder, by 2070 at this rate we will only be living to ~89 on average).

But there have been tremendous gains in healthcare improvements. Although healthcare costs continue to be overwhelmingly painful for Americans (and we see horrible return-on-investmentfor the amount we spend on healthcare without getting the corresponding improvements in health), heart disease death rates have fallen by half, stroke death rates have fallen by more than half, it turns out that the COVID19 vaccine doubled the cancer survival time of patients in a completely unexpected and amazing twist.

Many are also estimating that thanks to GLP1s like Ozempic and Wegovy, the US obesity rate is now falling for the first time ever (or at least since we started tracking it in 1980 🙂. As John Burn-Murdoch points out, “What makes this all the more remarkable is the contrast in mechanisms behind the respective declines in smoking and obesity. The former was eventually achieved through decades of campaigning, public health warnings, tax incentives and bans. With obesity, a single pharmaceutical innovation has done what those same methods have repeatedly failed to do.”

College Attendance

One of the biggest improvements since the 1970s has been college attendance, largely as more women began applying to college and more colleges began accepting women. Today ~40% of young adults have a bachelor’s degree, compared to ~10% in 1970. As I’ve previously covered in my article about male loneliness, women weren’t allowed into Yale until 1969, Brown until 1971, and Columbia until 1983. Colleges were not interested in accepting women for decades, but many of the social movements of the 1960s changed that persona, as well as the codification of Title IX. In 1970, 33.6% of women had less than a high school education. By 2016, it had fallen to just 6%.

People who go to college earn what is called ‘the college wage premium’ which means that they earn far more later in life. One government report says that men will make $900,000 more when they get a BA vs. only a high school degree and another gov report says that a BA can increase weekly median wages by 66%. At the same time, only half of all Americans say that college is only worth it now if you can go without taking out loans. With $200,000 in debt and a possible lifetime of interest on that loan, those higher wages may feel too far off for some people.

Quality of Life

In the Stossel debate, Norbert Michel explained, “Materially, we are so much better off now than we were in the 1960s and 1970s.” The median home size in 1963 was 1,365 feet but in 2023 the median is 2,286 feet. They are twice as likely to have central air, twice as likely to have a second refrigerator, and the abundance of dishwashers, washer dryers, and a range of other household appliances has made those homes much more comfortable. Those benefits have also created greater gains for women who disproportionately had many household duties fall on them.

While it may feel like the price of groceries has exploded in 1960, U.S. consumers spent an average of 17.0 percent of disposable personal income (DPI) on food. By 2019, this share had shrunk to 9.5 percent. People eat out at restaurants almost twice as often as they did in 1970 and they have the luxury of ordering food to their house more easily.

Path Forward

The Path Forward for this is pretty simple to describe, but challenging to achieve: Keep up the momentum. Our gains on climate, life expectancy, college, and quality of life feel like they are seeing cracks that we need to make sure stay closed. A new report found that climate change kills 1 person every minute globally. Measles was eliminated from the US in 2000 and is now seeing some of its highest levels in decades. 45 million Americans have $1.6 trillion in student debt. Women who have lost their right to choose and immigrants who feel threatened daily may not feel like their quality of life has improved, despite having a smartphone in their pockets. We still have a long way to go, and the further back we look, the better things might be (2025 is lightyears better than 1925) but today in America, the answer to the debate for me is clear: opportunity is out of reach.

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Thanks for being a part of American Inequality. We’re grateful to have you here and hope your friends want to join too, so forward this email around.

INTERESTING ON THE WEB:

* I spoke with John Stossel about whether its harder for Americans today to rise up the economic ladder (140,000 views and counting) - LINK

* The SNAP map showing where cuts will be felt the hardest - LINK

* The US town that pays every pregnant woman $1,500 - LINK

* How cities are using data to keep tabs on bad landlords - LINK

* Does a government shutdown impact inequality? LINK

* The Impact Map highlights all the places where contracts have been frozen, funding paused, or government workers fired - LINK

Over the past five years, ICE has detained hundreds of thousands of people across America—creating an unbearable weight for immigration courts to navigate. For this article, I dug into half a million detention records to uncover where the system is buckling. I identify why courts are drowning under the heaviest backlogs in history, where communities are crammed into the most overcrowded facilities, and which detention centers are profiting from this American calamity. On October 3rd, the government announced a plan to offer $2,500 to migrant children as young as 14 if they forego their court dates and voluntarily leave the country.

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Southern States have Highest Numbers of ICE Detainees

ICE has detained 60,000 people in America today. 71.5% of current detainees have no criminal convictions. Texas and Louisiana have the highest number of ICE detainees - accounting for 1/3rd of the total detention population. Part of the reason these Republican-dominated states have such higher arrest numbers — particularly when measured against population — is they have a longer history of working directly with ICE, and a stronger interest in collaboration. They want to be seen as working closely with the Trump administration. Even in June when masked federal immigration agents swept through Los Angeles, California saw 3,391 undocumented immigrants arrested, only about half as many as Texas.

The IAH Secure Adult Detention Facility in Livingston, Texas has the most overcrowded ICE detention center anywhere in America. The center is 235% beyond its capacity, housing 835 detainees in a space only designed for 350. Meanwhile the Adams County Detention Facility in Natchez, Mississippi has the highest capacity of ICE detainees in America at 2,179 detainees, 197% above its capacity. 47,551 people are held across all detention facilities, but there is only capacity for 32,508. People are living in wretched, overcrowded, and stressful conditions - often sleeping on concrete benches or on the floor. This is a humanitarian crisis that the US is engineering.

Nearly 90% of people in ICE custody are held in private prisons run for profit. Two of the largest, Geo Group and CoreCivic, are working to increase their ability to meet the administration’s demand.

76% of Detainees have No Lawyer Present in Court

I think most people do not know this, but there is no right to government-funded legal representation for people facing deportation. As a result, 76.7% of people pleading their deportation cases, including those for unaccompanied minors, had no attorney present to assist in their immigration court case when a removal order was issued. 26,000 immigrant children receive government-funded legal representation, but many are representing themselves in immigration court due to a shortage of attorneys Legal representation is expensive, and people are frequently held in remote facilities far from their community. And even if they can find an attorney, they often face barriers communicating with them.

Arrests are a way to put immigrants into a criminal justice system that is stacked against them. Court dates with no defense means that there is a huge asymmetric information disadvantage in the U.S. legal system that leaves many of these asylum seekers, most of whom have no criminal convictions, facing tradeoffs that they were wholly unprepared for. Can I be granted bond? How can I request court documents? What is the deadline for appealing my case?

The Trump administration’s tactics are a direct attack on due process. The administration’s recent moves to terminate bipartisan-supported legal orientation and referrals services within detention facilities and to end legal help for immigrants with mental health conditions only exacerbate this crisis.

A Backlog of Injustice

Even with more arrests, the Trump administration is not focused on offering more court dates. They are letting the backlog run wild and just planning to expel many asylum seekers from the country or keep them in detention indefinitely.

At the end of August 2025, 3,432,519 active cases were pending before U.S. immigration courts, a 3x increase from 2019. Of that 3.4M backlog, 2.3M immigrants have already filed formal asylum applications and are now waiting for asylum hearings or decisions in Immigration Court. If the current administration, however, is holding cases - those filed applications will go unanswered for years potentially. Deportation cases fell from a high of 262,178 in December 2023, the month before President Trump took office, to 30,501 just a year and a half later. The Trump administration is keeping hundreds of thousands of people stuck without court dates or due process, effectively trapping them in the criminal justice system. Miami-Dade County, FL, has the most residents with pending Immigration Court deportation cases at 146,293.

ICE is Not Focused on Criminals, Just Creating Fear

One of the most striking data points to emerge from this entire research was that ICE is not targeting criminals or violent offenders in their raids. According to the hundreds of thousands of court records I reviewed,only 1.59% of 2025 new cases sought deportation orders based on any alleged criminal activity of the immigrant, apart from possible illegal entry. Interviews with families revealed a sense of bewilderment about why ICE decided to arrest their father or mother. There was no criminal history, they had consistently shown up to court dates and were working respectable jobs and paying taxes. The almost randomness of the attacks has been paralyzing.

But the goal is not only to arrest and deport criminals - it also to incite fear. We know that ICE is using court dates to arrest immigrants the moment right after they walk out of the courtroom. Families plead their case in front of a judge that they need asylum from the terrors and injustices they experience in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, only to be snatched up by ICE officers waiting outside the door for them when their case is quickly dismissed or rescheduled for years in the future (a common feature in a backlogged system). Then they are trapped in a new lawsuit battle over a civil immigration violation, which is based on federal immigration law, not criminal code. These charges can include being in the U.S. without legal status.

Carlos Javier Lopez Benitez is a 27-year-old immigrant from Paraguay who felt all of these injustices over the last 3 months. On July 26, he showed up for his New York City court date seeking asylum, only to have his hearing rescheduled for 2029. Carlos had crossed the southern US border in May 2023 escaping his country and was apprehended by border patrol in Arizona. He was placed in deportation proceedings and released into the United States as his case wound through the courts. He traveled to New York, where he reunited with his two sisters, who are U.S. citizens. He lived in Queens, worked in construction and did not have a criminal record, according to his family and his lawyers. Mr. Lopez Benitez showed up regularly for court dates, but on that July date, ICE was waiting for him outside. They arrested him on grounds that he was in the country illegally and they transferred him 1,600 miles away to a detention center in Houston. 2 weeks after his detention, he was transferred back to New York City and released while his deportation case proceeded.

The Path Forward

ICE is weaponizing the courts. To stop this current administration from using the justice system as a tool of control instead of a force for righteousness, here are a few things public, private, and non-profit organizations can focus on.

* Increase awareness and funds for pro-bono legal representation: In March, Trump eliminated government grants that offered more than $200M in legal services to migrants. Pro bono services are desperately needed and immigrants also must understand the organizations to engage. Studies show that immigrants with attorneys are 3.5 times more likely to be granted bond (enabling release from detention) and up to 10 times more likely to establish their right to remain in the United States than those without representation. This 152 page doc from the DOJ is the most comprehensive official resource in existence.

* End mass deportation: America has created this catastrophe. We need to end the raids, we need to end the family separation, we need to end the fear instilling assaults on communities, workers, and people who have come to America because they fear oppression and retaliation in their own countries and are seeking a better life here. This includes reducing local law enforcement deputization - a program known as 287(g) - and aggressive ICE-local partnerships that lead to broad, non-targeted arrests and community fear.

* Improve court capacity: Justice delayed is justice denied. A backlog of 3.4M cases is unacceptable. The justice system at all levels of the courts can focus on hiring and properly training the judges needed to reduce backlog, use data-driven triage to fast-track meritorious asylum claims, expand remote hearings where appropriate, and publish clearer continuance/adjournment data.

Thanks as always for reading and leave your comments below for anything that surprised you, inspired you, or you want me to respond to.

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Alcohol is one of the worst killers in America. Alcohol kills more people than opioids and suicides combined each year. Every 3 minutes, 1 person dies in America due to alcohol abuse, according to data from the CDC. By the time you finish this article, at least one person will be dead. Alcohol shortened the lives of those who died by an average of 24 years, leading to 4 million years of potential life lost. The number of alcohol-related deaths more than doubled among Americans between 1999 and 2020.

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On August 13, Gallup Poll released survey results reporting that only 54% of U.S. adults said they consumed alcohol, the lowest percentage in Gallup’s 90 years of collecting data on drinking behavior. Those who did drink alcohol said they were consuming less, the poll found.

At the same time, I consistently hear this strong narrative that alcohol consumption is good because it also means higher socialization. “What’s wrong with young people today? They don’t get drunk any more,” declared one Guardian headline. “Champagne sales are down. Are parties dying too?” asked another WaPopiece. “We may have already hit peak booze,” wrote another Bloomberg article that praised a beloved tradition. There’s an adage that “Every drink takes five minutes off your life.” In January 2025, Derek Thompson wrote an Atlantic article that captured something a bit odd about this phrase. “Maybe the thought scares you. Personally, I find comfort in it,” Thompson wrote.

For years Americans were fed a false idea that alcohol might be good for you. “There was this perception that a glass of red wine with dinner every night might actually help you live longer,” saidDr. Scott Hadland, the chief of adolescent and young adult medicine at Mass General for Children and an addiction specialist. In the 1990s, some doctors even encouraged moderate drinking.

Consumption of alcohol is unequivocally dangerous for communities. Depending on where you are born, you may be far more likely to die from alcohol than in other parts of the U.S. Lax state liquor laws, lower enforcement of those laws, or higher rates of drunk driving – particularly in rural areas — may kill you at a much younger age. When it comes to different demographics, some communities are far more likely to suffer from the onslaughts of alcohol than others.

STATE IMPACTS OF LAX LIQUOR LAWS

Inequalities in alcohol’s impact on communities is clear in the data. Stepping just a few feet across the state border from Lincoln County, Nevada to Washington County, Utah drops the excessive drinking rate by half, from 24% to 12%. Nevada has the weakest liquor laws of any state in the nation while Utah has some of the strongest. Las Vegas drives Nevada’s lax liquor laws, permitting people to buy liquor 24/7, to enshrine that public intoxication is not a crime, to ban “last calls” at bars, and to codify no state-level Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) law, meaning there are no state regulations on labeling, advertising, or retail outlets for alcohol.

Utah, on the other hand, has a high mormon population and high altitudes which led to high restrictions on alcohol: You must order food if you’re ordering alcohol at a restaurant, all liquor bottles need a ‘metered-pour’ which control how much alcohol is dispensed from a bottle, beer at grocery stores can’t be more than 5% though this was recently 3.2%, and liquor can’t be purchased on Sundays.

The death rate from alcohol in Nevada is twice as highas it is in Utah.

Differences in saws aren’t the only thing that causes death rates to change — low enforcement of those laws also leads to unequal outcomes. Up until 2023, Wisconsin was one of only a handful of states that didn’t have a dedicated office charged with enforcement of alcohol laws. One official explained that alcohol enforcement in the state “went to hell” for decades as lobbyists helped wholesalers skirt many state laws, like shipping beers directly to consumers. Wisconsin is “locked in this weird death grip with alcohol,” saidJohn Eich, director of the Wisconsin Office of Rural Health. “There’s a cultural level of acceptance of excessive drinking.” Wisconsin ranks the highest in the nation for excessive alcohol use which includes binge drinking, drinking while pregnant, heavy drinking and underage drinking. The powerful trade group the Tavern League of Wisconsin and the well-rehearsed phrase “Drink Wisconsibly” all reinforce this culture. Drinking deaths for Wisconsinites sites tripled from 6.7 to 18.5 per 100,000 from 1999 to 2020.

States with lax liquor laws have far higher death rates from alcohol and more drunk driving incidents. While culture and enforcement of these laws are a factor too, inequality in outcomes persist depending on which side of a state border a person is born on.

INEQUALITY FROM ALCOHOL

Inequality is rampant when it comes to how different communities experience alcohol:

* Native Americans are five-times more likely to die from alcohol abuse than their White peers, largely because support for these communities is far lower

* Low-income Americans are twice as likely to die from alcohol as their high-income peers

* Liquor stores tend to concentrate in low-income or high-poverty communities

* When sin-taxes are lowered on alcohol or prices decline, low-income people die at higher rates from the change than high-income people do

* Men in rural areas are 18% more likely to die from alcohol compared to their urban peers (controlling for income, education, and demographics). Rural women were 23% more likely.

* Men who are dependent on alcohol are six-times more likely to be arrested for threatening, attacking or sexually assaulting their wives, girlfriends or female ex-partners than men who are not dependent.

A POSITIVE TREND

Last year was the first on record, going back to 1975, that fewer than 50 percent of high school seniors said they’d ever had a drink of alcohol. As recently as 1989, the share was higher than 90 percent. While some view this as a negative sign that teens are not socializing enough or not taking enough risks, I view it as a positive sign. Alcohol is bad for communities and especially bad for young people. Mounting research suggests that even a little alcohol takes a toll on the body, damaging DNA. Last year, Dr. Vivek Murthy, then the surgeon general, stressed that drinking caused preventable cancers and called for alcoholic beverages to carry warning labels, like cigarettes. Let’s not conflate alcohol and socialization.

Only 50% of those aged 18 to 34 said they drank alcohol, the same as in 2024 and down from 59% in 2023. Just 56% of respondents 35 to 54 said they drank alcohol, falling from 70% in 2024.

The Path Forward

* Stricter state laws — Utah offers an example of the best state alcohol laws in the nation. Communities would benefit tremendously from following Utah’s example. Specifically, Utah is the only state in the nation that has a blood-alcohol content (BAC) limit of 0.05%. Every other state is 0.08%. A 2022 study from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Utah’s fatal crash rate dropped by 19.8% in 2019, the first year under the lower legal limit, and the fatality rate decreased by 18.3%. The neighboring States of Arizona, Colorado, and Nevada did not show the same levels of improvement in fatal crash and fatality rates as Utah. 22% of those who drank alcohol indicated they had changed their behaviors once the law went into effect. Other laws that have shown to be beneficial are: (a) higher alcohol taxes; (b) Limiting days/hours of sale; and (c) enforcing dram shop liability laws, which means that places selling alcohol are responsible for the injuries or harms caused by illegally serving certain customers.

* Limit alcohol establishment density, particularly in high-poverty areas: One studypublished in the Journal of Community Psychology that for every 1-unit increase in liquor store outlet density, there was a 7.3-year decrease in life expectancy. Areas with poverty rates exceeding 20% typically show 50% higher concentration of liquor stores and historically redlined areas tend to have much higher concentrations of establishments that sell alcohol. Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Baltimore have all passed zoning regulations or passed laws that capped the number of liquor licenses in certain neighborhoods to reduce outlet density. Studies from UNC and Johns Hopkins have found that policies like these can prevent hundreds of homicides and save tens of millions of dollars each year.

Over the last few years, the health harms of drinking have come into focus. Mounting research suggests that even a little alcohol takes a toll on the body, damaging DNA. Last year, Dr. Vivek Murthy, then the surgeon general, stressed that drinking caused preventable cancers and called for alcoholic beverages to carry warning labels, like cigarettes. Hopefully this change can overpower the narrative that alcohol and socialization go hand-in-hand and that people can find a much safer way to spend time with each other.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://americaninequality.substack.com/subscribe

If all the people incarcerated in the United States lived in one city, it would be the 5th largest city in the nation. As of 2022, there are 1.8 million people incarcerated in the United States, or slightly larger than Phoenix, Arizona (1.6M). While mass incarceration is often justified as a strategy to improve public safety, its impact in many cases has been deeply harmful. Long prison sentences, limited rehabilitative services, and inefficient crime reporting systems show how mass incarceration often undermines its stated goal of reducing harm.

These visuals are all interactive and available with more information at this link here.

The increase in incarceration began in the late 1970s when the Nixon administration declared a ‘war on drugs’ and promised to be ‘tough on crime’. In 1980 the incarcerated population exploded, with a huge increase for the next 30 years. Mandatory minimums, three strike laws, and low-level drug offenses put far more behind bars than ever. Across the country, in all states, from large cities to small towns, incarceration grew. But even with these punitive measures, the violent crime rate also continued to increase.

The US has a higher incarceration rate than El Salvador or Rwanda.

Several countries experienced a similar increase in crime between 1972 and 1991, but very few expanded incarceration in the same way as the US. Even as crime rates fell between 1991 and 2009, incarceration continued to expand. Compared to other countries, the US has a significantly higher incarceration rate when controlling for the nation’s violent crime rate. The US has a higher incarceration rate than El Salvador or Rwanda. Even in places like Botswana or Ecuador that have far higher violent crime rates that are triple and quadruple what they are in America, their incarceration rates are one-third lower.

Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana have the highest incarceration rates in the United States. 17 states have a higher incarceration rate than any other country in the world.

Black and Latino individuals are incarcerated more than 5 times the rate of people who are White. This reflects long standing issues of racial bias in our policies and policing. Punitive policies often involve targeting minority groups. While the US has a long history of incarcerating Black Americans, law enforcement agencies have recently turned their gaze onto immigrant communities. However, research shows that immigrants, many of whom are people of color,have a lower crime rate than native born Americans.

Closing Thoughts

Mass Incarceration has not been shown to improve public safety. Increasing punitive measures often deepens challenges faced by individuals and communities, while doing little to prevent future crime. Having more research-based policies with proven results and investments in rehabilitation is the only way we can move forward. While incarceration rates have been falling, the US is still struggling with a multi-decade long legacy of mass incarceration. Mike Wesslerat the Prison Policy Initiative has the final word on America’s choice for the future:

“America's forty-year experiment with mass incarceration has been an abysmal failure. Punitive and racist policies have destroyed lives and communities, wasted taxpayer dollars, and not made communities safer. The country has a choice: it can double down on the misguided so-called "tough-on-crime" policies that created this crisis, or it can choose a new path forward By investing in communities, expanding access to treatment, and increasing economic opportunities, America has the chance to close the books on the era of mass incarceration once and for all. The question is, will the country take advantage of this opportunity?”

5 Great Organizations to Connect With and Support:

* Prison Policy Initiative: Non-profit that produces cutting edge research to expose the broader harm of mass criminalization, and sparks advocacy campaigns to create a more just society.

* The Sentencing Project: The Sentencing Project advocates for effective and humane responses to crime that minimize imprisonment and criminalization of youth and adults by promoting racial, ethnic, economic, and gender justice.

* Vera Institute of Justice: A national organization that partners with impacted communities and government leaders for change. Their goal is to end the criminalization and mass incarceration of people of color, immigrants, and people experiencing poverty.

* Equal Justice Initiative: The Equal Justice Initiative is committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, to challenging racial and economic injustice, and to protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society.

* Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (WISLY): Finalist for the 2023 National Book Award for Fiction and A New York Times Top Ten Book of the Year, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a dystopian novel that delivers a searing critique of the U.S. prison-industrial complex with footnotes and real incarceration statistics.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://americaninequality.substack.com/subscribe

“You can’t beat someone who doesn’t give up.”

Here is the fantastic conversation I had with Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action and NYTimes Best Seller.

Shannon offers so much insight into how people can begin to make a difference in their communities and battle against injustice to find more opportunity.

Tune in to see some specific stories about how to deal with blowback, how to find your spark, and why we need more people to be running for public office.

American Inequality is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit https://americaninequality.substack.com/subscribe

Marie Newman is a former congresswoman (D-IL03), nonprofit CEO, marketing executive, author of A Life Made from Scratch and When Your Child Is Being Bullied: Real Solutions, former Moms Demand Action spokesperson, health equity champion and national LGBTQ+ advocate. In addition to those roles, she is a mom of two adult children, consultant and podcaster. Her Substack is Marie Newman.

Written by Marie Newman, Data charts provided by Jeremy Ney .

We have a crisis on our hands that has not received enough attention. Gen Z cannot afford their lives. Period. Worse, the generations before them have, unfortunately, contributed to this crisis. We have all voted for and elected politicians who have genuinely not listened to their voters, but did what their donors asked, causing not just a daunting income gap, but an affordability chasm.

So here we are.

Income inequality has become a pronounced concern worldwide, impacting various generations differently. Among these, Generation Z (born approximately 1997–2012) faces a unique economic landscape shaped by technological advancements, global crises, and shifting job markets. Comparing their experiences to those of Millennials, Generation X, and Baby Boomers highlights important disparities and challenges.

I see this front and center in my own family. My kids are challenged by high rent, car prices, food prices and being able to afford insurance in their twenties.

My son, who has a master’s degree in political science and international affairs had to move to a smaller city in a neighboring state in order to get a job in his field, and be paid enough to be able to afford rent, food and daily expenses. He is working hard and making ends meet, but just barely. He is finding it nearly impossible to save or plan for his future due to the state of our country’s economy, stagnant wages and the skyrocketing cost of housing.

My daughter has a year of college under her belt, is very bright and is willing to work hard, but finding a job that will allow her to live on her own is very tough, but we believe she will prevail out of pure will and tenacity. She may need to tether together two gig jobs to make it all work.

As I always say, everybody’s everyday is too expensive and can be demoralizing.

Let’s break it down…

The Economic Environment for Gen Z

1. Entry into the Workforce During Turbulent Times

Gen Z's transition into employment has coincided with major global upheavals. The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in significant job disruptions; the International Labour Organization (ILO) reported that youth unemployment globally spiked to 14.2% in 2020, compared to 8.2% for adults. Many young workers have been pushed into unstable gig roles, which often lack stability and benefits, impacting earnings and career progression.

2. Education and Student Debt

Gen Z is the most educated generation, with about 60% in the U.S. pursuing post-secondary education, according to the Pew Research Center. However, the average student loan debt for new graduates has increased dramatically; the Federal Reserve reports that the average student loan debt reached $37,338 per borrower in 2023, up from roughly $24,000 in 2010. This debt burden hampers wealth accumulation and homeownership opportunities.

3. Housing and Cost of Living

Housing affordability has worsened. The National Association of Realtors (2024) notes that median home prices in the U.S. increased approximately 50% from 2015 to 2024, while wages for young workers grew at a modest rate, about 15% over the same period (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). This disparity makes saving for a house significantly harder for Gen Z.

4. Technological Economy and New Opportunities

Digital platforms have created income streams—YouTubers, TikTok influencers, and online entrepreneurs—but earnings are often inconsistent. For instance, a 2023 survey by Statista indicated that only 15% of Gen Z online creators earn a sustainable income, despite many more believing that this can be a viable financial future for them. Economic precariousness is the reality amidst the digital boom.

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Income Inequality Compared to Other Generations

1. Wealth Accumulation and Intergenerational Transfer

Data from the Federal Reserve’s 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances shows that the median net worth for Baby Boomers (age 58-76) was approximately $288,700, compared to just $13,900 for Gen Z (age 18-26). Moreover, inherited wealth continues to benefit older generations: approximately 70% of Millennial and Gen Z wealth is not inherited, compared to less than 30% for Boomers, underscoring a growing wealth gap.

2. Income Disparities

The top 1% of earners in the U.S. capture about 20% of the total income, according to the Economic Policy Institute (2023). Meanwhile, median wages for young workers (ages 16-24) have stagnated, growing only about 1% annually since 2010, far below the growth rate needed to keep pace with inflation and living costs.

3. Social Mobility and Opportunity

The OECD reports that the U.S. has one of the lowest social mobility rates among developed nations. For Gen Z, mobility prospects are further diminished; a 2022 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicates that economic mobility for U.S. youth has declined by nearly 25% over the past 50 years, making upward movement more difficult than in previous generations.

Broader Impacts and Future Outlook

The rising income inequality impairs Gen Z's ability to accumulate assets, achieve homeownership, and secure financial independence. The World Bank estimates that global wealth inequality has increased by around 10% since 2010, with young people bearing the brunt.

The Path Forward

In some ways, there is a simple solution. Bring Gen Z into the conversation. Here is a path forward that can create more economic opportunity not only for Gen Z, but for America writ large.

* Elect Gen Z and Millennial candidates. This will ensure more representation for these types of issues and bring a much needed spotlight to people’s experiences.

* Completely transform campaign finance law: outlaw corporate PACs, dark money and Super PACs. Once politicians are no longer beholden to maleficent money, then they will have to listen to voters like Gen Z, act on their wishes and start addressing the income chasm crisis with bold action.

The tougher part is getting Gen Z and Millennials elected to state houses and Congress.

My solution: I am only working with and supporting candidates that support the above goals, and interestingly, most are Gen Z and Millenials.

Keep charging folks!

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Welcome to the first edition of The Dividing Line.

This new series is going to focus more on interactive data visualizations and analysis, particularly in a time when we are losing access to public data. Let us know your thoughts below.

In no other developed country does sending your child to school feel like a gamble with their life—but in the United States, school shootings have become a grim and recurring reality.

These visuals are all interactive and available with more information at this link!

A Growing Issue

Since 1999, school shootings have continued to grow. After 2018, there was a significant spike and continued increase after the COVID-19 pandemic. This animation highlights each school shooting.

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More Children at Risk

It’s not just the sheer number of shootings—it’s the relentlessness. Each shooting has become more violent, with more individuals hurt or killed.

Firearms are the leading cause of child mortality

It’s no shock that with the increase in gun sales, gun deaths are increasing across the United States. 2021 marked the first time motor vehicle deaths were NOT the leading cause of child deaths but rather, firearms.

1 in 25 American five-year olds will not reach their 40th birthday now. Much of that is due to gun violence.

A Crisis of Male Violence

The perpetrators of school shootings also happen to be vastly concentrated in one group — men. 95% of school shooters are men. The youngest perpetrator in the data available across all racial groups was 6 years old.

Disproportionate Victims

The population that is most affected by school shootings are black students. As of 2022, 15% of students in the US are black, 48% of students are white and 29% are Hispanic, but when looking at students who experienced a mass shooting, 33% are black, 32% are white, and 28% are Hispanic. Black students are approximately 3.3 times more likely to experience a school shooting than White students, relative to their representation in the US student population.

Easy Access to Guns

Where are they getting the guns? The most common instances are from people close to the shooters who have already legally purchased the weapon themselves.

Closing Thoughts

Mike Tiede grew up with guns in his childhood home. Here are some of his thoughts: “I went hunting every fall with my family. Before I was allowed to hunt, my dad had me take a firearm safety class where we learned about gun safety. These kinds of classes are available to the public—but they’re not required. Making firearm safety education mandatory could be one of several common-sense steps toward reducing gun violence. It would not only help ensure responsible ownership but could also introduce delays or barriers to impulsive or harmful purchases. Education and increased barriers alone isn’t the answer, but they are tools among many we should be using more widely.”

5 Great Organizations Leading the Charge

Everytown For Gun Safety: The largest gun violence prevention organization in the country.

Sandy Hook Promise: Founded by families who lost loved ones in the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, this nonprofit focuses on preventing school shootings through violence prevention education in schools.

The Trace: A nonprofit newsroom dedicated to reporting on gun violence and publishing in-depth investigations and data stories.

Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence: Focused on public health and evidence-based approaches to gun violence.

Cure Violence Global: Great Organization that treats violence as a contagious disease and focus on intervention and prevention in urban communities.

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INTERESTING ON THE WEB

* Is walkability score just the same as white score? LINK

* Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz warns about the wealth inequality that he expects AI will usher in. LINK

* Climate change in Australia is worsening inequality. LINK

* DOGE downsizing and federal office closures, mapped by our good friend Jon Schwabish at Brookings & PolicyViz. LINK

While we may not know what the final outcome of the tariffs will be, we can be completely sure that they will increase inequality because we’ve been here before. Mark Muro and the team at Brookings have identified which of America’s 3,143 US counties are most at-risk from Chinese retaliatory tariffs.

China has announced retaliatory tariffs on a total of 80 different products that map to 14 different industries including automobiles, oil and gas, farm machinery, and equipment manufacturing. These 14 industries cover between 400,000 and 700,000 jobs in the United States, but some states and some counties are at much higher risk.

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Sargent County, N.D. has the highest potential exposure of any county due to its large manufacturing presence, with 59% of its employment in industries potentially affected by the tariffs. Sargent County is relatively small, but Harris County in Texas (where Houston is) has 33,000 jobs which may be at risk, largely in oil and gas. Other notable counties include Wayne County, Mich. (26,000); Alameda County, Calif. (25,000); Jefferson County, Ky. (13,000); and Elkhart County, Ind. (12,000).

Tariffs will batter low-income communities

Not only are these specific counties and industries most at-risk, but so too are low-income communities. According to theBudget Lab at Yale University, which analyzed the impact of the original tariffs Trump announced over a week ago, the average American household would lose about $3,800 annually because of the tariffs. For the lowest income households. The bottom 10 percent of households by income, for example, would spend 4% of their disposable income on tariffs, while the top 10 percent will only pay 1.6%.

Tariffs are a tax on the poor

If the tariffs bring on a recession, low-income communities will suffer the most. During the Great Recession between 2007 and 2009, the number of people living below the poverty line increased by nearly 5 million. When layered on top of the tax cuts, program cuts, and others that have also started putting the economy into a tailspin, the bottom 20% of earners in the US are set to lose $2,030 annually, or 9% of their incomes.

Lessons from the China Trade Shock of 2001

But America has also been here before during the China Trade Shock. My former advisor, Gordon Hanson, published groundbreaking research with David Autor and David Dorn about the role of China joining the World Trade Organization in 2001. The authors find that the impact of China having new access to global trade decimated several US industries and counties. The China trade shock reduced US manufacturing employment by 1 million U.S. manufacturing jobs, and 2.4 million jobs overall, explaining about 16% of the total decline in manufacturing employment in the US between 2000 and 2007.

Hanson, Autor, and Dorn’s research has resurfaced as many are trying to identify which parts of the US may be at risk again from China targeting certain US industries with retaliatory tariffs. At that time, North Carolina furniture producing counties like Randolph County and Chatham County were hit the hardest. In 2000, the furniture industry in Hickory, N.C., employed more than 32,000 people, a fifth of the area’s private-sector workers. Within a decade, that number had been cut by nearly 60 percent — a devastating blow that was repeated in many regions.

“The communities that were most exposed to the China trade shock were those that were highly specialized in labor-intensive manufacturing. Because factories closed and jobs disappeared in these places over two decades ago, they have no industrial base or industrial work force to be reactivated by US tariffs on China. The ineffectiveness of Trump tariffs on generating job growth in China-shocked communities will simply be continued by these ongoing Trump tariffs,” Gordon Hanson shared with me.

Ben Casselman at the New York Times wrote on April 11, “Economists who have studied the issue also argue that Mr. Trump misunderstands the nature of the China shock. The real lesson of the episode wasn’t about trade at all, they say — it was about the toll that rapid economic changes can take on workers and communities — and by failing to understand that, Mr. Trump risks repeating the mistakes he claims he has vowed to correct.”

“For the last 20 years we’ve been hearing about the China shock and how brutal it was and how people can’t adjust,” said Scott Lincicome, a trade economist at the Cato Institute, a libertarian research organization. “And finally, after most places have moved on, now we’re shocking them again.”

This is where the inequality machine is about to kick into high gear. We’ve already seen what happens to these communities once. They have not bounced back in the 20 years since they were first hit (though Biden’s infrastructure bill did directly focus on funds to these communities based). Poverty in America is a trap that gets worse the deeper you sink. Tariffs may irreparably damn many of these communities.

Trump counties will be lose jobs at a rate of 2-1

Ironically but perhaps unsurprisingly, Mark Muro’s team at Brookings discovered that the counties most likely to be negatively impacted by the tariffs are also the highest Trump voting counties. The regions that are about to be hit hardest by Chinese retaliatory tariffs voted for Trump over Harris by a margin of 2-to-1. Mark writes, “Many of the most tariff-exposed counties are found in the industrial heartland and Southeast regions, which formed Trump’s electoral base in 2024, including Elkhart and Gibson counties in Indiana; Macomb County, Michigan; Irion County, Texas; and Spartanburg County, South Carolina. Of the 2,010 counties with employment in tariff-affected industries, 1,722 of them voted for Trump compared to just 288 for Harris.”

Victor Fettes lives in one of those areas that swung towards Trump and he is seeing his 401K disappear. “I looked at my 401(k) this morning and in the last two days that’s lost $58,000. We’re down $70,000 since February. That’s stressful,” Victor said, who retired last week as a senior director of risk management and compliance at Verizon. “If that continues, I can’t stay retired.” Victor has been calling his representatives nonstop to make sure they understand that this is not the type of change that he wanted. Although Trump had been talking about tariffs consistently on the campaign trail and during his last presidency, many Americans did not understand what this would really entail. “This is money that I now can’t count on later.”

The Path Forward

The Trump administration is largely of the belief that tariffs may hurt Wall Street but benefit Main Street. We’ve heard this consistently in talking points, but it is far from the truth. Not only do lower income or middle class Americans also own stock typically through their 401K plans, but they will also suffer higher prices for all goods because tariffs don’t happen in a vacuum — other countries respond, high walls means goods need to go somewhere else, and tariffs are effectively a consumption tax, which disproportionately impacts low-income Americans who spend a larger share of their earnings on consumption. The path forward is fairly obvious.

* Don’t roll out tariffs - It is hard to get economists to agree on anything, but one areawhere they are in complete agreement is that tariffs are bad. “Tariffs are great – If you like raising prices, undermining jobs, and inhibiting innovation,” says Matthew Rooney at the George W. Bush Institute for Economic Growth. Several Trump supporters are breaking with the President or at least pleading with him to reverse his policy. If you want a great analysis of all the arguments for tariffs and why they are wrong, check out fellow Substacker Noah Smith’s teardown here

* At least help low-income families through tax cuts - In 2017, the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation published “How Tariffs and Regressive Trade Policies Hurt the Poor” which is again making the rounds. The authors wrote, ‘While raising tariffs hurts lower-income Americans, decreasing them can provide a breath of economic fresh air. If America were to eliminate all tariffs today, lower-income families could expect to retain more of their incomes than the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts allowed them to keep.” The authors go on to explain that tax cuts for low-income families can put more hands in the pockets of people to afford the higher prices of goods that they now have to endure. If Trump is so committed to an international policy that he thinks will get him a “good deal” then a domestic policy of tax cuts to low-income families could provide at least some economic reprieve.

* Prevent recessions - It is wild to have to write that sentence, but there is an argument going around that recessions can actually help rightset our economy. Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson were on the front lines of arguing against this narrative when their book Abundance came out, with interviewers essentially asking the duo if a recession would be good for the economy because it would lower housing prices. The argument is that recessions are temporary, but the price changes would be longer lasting. There is irrefutable evidence that recessions are worse for poor people. There are also much more effective and easier ways to lower prices of goods. Inflation was a big reason Biden lost public favor, so I understand the Trump administration’s focus on trying to lower prices, but tariffs do the exact opposite by design. They are effectively hoping that tariffs will cause a recession that will reduce inflation.

Trump has the perfect 3 step formula for bringing on a recession and spiking inequality. Step 1: Tariffs. Step 2: Inflation. Step 3: Job Losses in the Heartland. But the path forward are 3 steps that America would be much better off following.

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This article is part 2 of 2 in a series on maternal mortality and inequality in America.

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In last week’s article, I discussed why America may be dramatically overcounting maternal mortality. The short answer is first, the CDC botched the rollout of the pregnancy checkboxes, leaving states to count these deaths differently; and second, physicians are likely counting more deaths as pregnancy related than they ought to (i.e. a pregnant woman who dies in a car accident shouldn’t be counted in maternal mortality statistics).

Today’s article instead is about how America at the same time is dramatically undercounting maternal mortality. This is because we fail to include the #1 cause of deaths for pregnant women and new mothers: homicide.

Homicide is the leading cause of maternal mortality

Nationally, there were 10,715 deaths of people who were pregnant or within 1 year postpartum from 2018 to 2022, including 837 homicides, 579 suicides, 2083 drug overdoses, and 851 that involved firearms. If homicides were included in maternal mortality statistics, it would raise the rate by 5.23 deaths per 100,00 live births. Women who are pregnant or postpartum had a 35% higher risk of homicide, compared to their peers. When women under 25 get pregnant, their odds of death by homicide double.

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Using Anant’s method, this would increase the maternal mortality rate from 10 deaths per 100,000 births to 15 deaths per 100,000 births — a significant jump.

Homicides are not counted in the official statistics of maternal mortality. While this is typical for most countries across the world, the incredibly high gun ownership rate, domestic violence rates, and crime rates in the US make this a much more stark problem. 68% of homicides of pregnant women or new mothers involved firearms. Homicide deaths among pregnant women are more prevalent than deaths from hypertensive disorders, hemorrhage, or sepsis.

Louisiana recently published a report on the causes of death for pregnant mothers and it revealed that homicide is the second leading cause of death after overdoses. Once again, the Louisiana data reveals that homicides for young pregnant Black women are five times more likely than for their White peers.

Nationally, pregnant Black women were eight times more likely to be killed by their intimate partner than non pregnant Black women.

The real story is that women aren’t dying in hospitals — they are dying in their homes, killed by husbands and boyfriends when they arrive with a newborn. Our hospitals aren’t necessarily the problem (and only 30% of hospitals ask about problems at home), it’s so much bigger than that. The stresses of early parenthood and pregnancy bring out the worst in people, and this can lead to murderous rage in America.

Could this death have been prevented?

13 states ask in their maternal mortality questionnaire “could this death have been prevented?” As the New York Times explains, “National-level data on the pregnancy-homicide phenomenon is difficult to find, as it’s often buried in individual state reports on maternal mortality or in databases inaccessible to the public.”

If you haven’t read this New York Times story of the tragic death of Markitha Sinegal I highly highly recommend it. The story unravels in heartbreaking detail about the fight Markitha had with her boyfriend in New Orleans as they struggled to raise their 9-month old twins together. Markitha’s father knew there were issues, and in fact she had called the police on her husband a few times about violence in the home. The night before the homicide happened, Markitha asked her dad to drop off some cash for gas money.

“She answers the door, but she isn't her usual happy self. He can't shake the feeling that something is wrong. He hugs her goodbye, and her hold on him feels like a vise grip. ‘I love you, he tells her.’

“As he gets back in his car, he looks up. Markitha is standing there, watching him from the door. Something is wrong, he thinks. Maybe he should go back up there. Maybe he should ask her what's going on. "I'm going to talk to her tomorrow," he tells himself.

The next day, Markitha’s husband shoots her in the back during an altercation while her mother-in-law slept in the next room. It was the day before Mother’s Day.

National statistics mask state challenges

Some states are massive outliers on maternal mortality and account for the vast majority of deaths relating to pregnancy. Mississippi has a maternal mortality rate that is double the US average, and during the pandemic, and during the height of the pandemic in 2021, the mortality rate tripled to 82 per 100,000 births, according to the Mississippi State Medical Association. But even if we look at the period before the pandemic (2016-2020) the maternal mortality rate for women aged 35-39 was still this high, at 81 per 100,000. At the time, Mississippi women this age had a higher mortality rate than for women in Libya who were in the midst of a civil war.

Black maternal mortality is consistently three times higher than that of both White women and Hispanic women. Using the CDC data, the White maternal mortality rate for 2024 was 15 per 100,000 while the Black maternal mortality rate was 50. The Hispanic rate was below all of them at 13.6. While there is no real consensus on why this is lower, some theories suggest the typically lower age of Hispanic mothers, healthier eating habits, and strong communities.

K.S. Joseph and Ananth’s new research did find disparities between Black and White women. Depending on the period, Black women were 3-4x more likely to die during childbirth than their White counterparts, even when controlling for income and education.

A Black woman with a college degree is 1.6x more likely to die as a result of pregnancy or childbirth as a white woman with less than a high school diploma.

The most harmful argument against maternal mortality statistics

The most harmful argument against maternal mortality statistics is a question of scale. These types of arguments have skyrocketed online after both Trump elections.

We’ve seen that the official numbers for maternal mortality do not capture the full picture. It is OK to question data and try to evaluate how we can improve it and understand what may be missing.

What is not OK to do is to say that some of these numbers do not matter. This is an argument I’ve seen about maternal mortality statistics…

The argument goes something like this: In 2022, there were 817 pregnancy related deaths in America. While it is difficult to find homicide date, between 2018-2022 there were likely 200 maternal homicide deaths per year. However, overall in America in 2022, there were more than 25,000 homicides. This makes homicides against pregnant women less than 1% of all homicides. Isn’t this just a drop in the bucket?

The argument continues: Heart disease kills more than 700,000; cancer kills more than 600,000;. Suicide kills more than 48,000; and overdoses kills more than 47,000. Shouldn’t we be focusing on the biggest killers in America instead of such a small population?

And finally: This is a problem for outliers. Only some states or some populations are really bad. The vast majority of Americans don’t experience these problems, it’s just a few areas that drive down the averages.

Politicians make these arguments out loud too. Michigan state house candidate Robert “R.J.” Regan in 2022 said that attacks against women are just a fact of life and in some cases there are more things the women should be doing to try to avoid these dangerous situations.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) in 2022 said that despite Louisiana having one of the worst maternal mortality rates in the country, “if you correct our population for the race, we’re not as much of an outlier as it’d otherwise appear.” In other words: we’re not so bad if you don’t count our Black women.

Not one single mother should die in America. More pregnant women are the victims of homicide every year in America than total victims of all homicide in Iceland in a decade.

Women should not die from pregnancy complications, not from lack of care, not from the violent hand of their partners. 1 death is too high. These numbers aren’t statistics —- these are people. And in particular, these are people who leave behind babies who will grow up not knowing who their mother was.

The Path Forward

Since 2020, all 50 states have been reporting standardized data to the CDC on maternal mortality statistics. While we can be sure that everyone is comparing apples to apples, the scope is still misguided.

* Expand Tacking to 1 Year Postpartum: The federal government should require all states to track maternal deaths up to one year postpartum, not just the 6-week period currently used in CDC statistics. This would go beyond the 37 states that currently do this and use those metrics for their own state-wide programs for maternal health. The CDC already funds a program called Maternal Mortality Review Committees (MMRCs). These MMRCs should be the ones to support states in this roll out to standardize reporting and create a national database. This will ensure we stop undercounting maternal mortality deaths by a full one-third.

* Include Homicides in Maternal Mortality Statistics: The CDC needs to link its data with data from the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS). While the CDC only publishes death certificates, the NVDRS links to police, autopsy and other reports that can clarify whether the homicide was an incident of intimate partner violence. Researchers have been able to link this data themselves, but this needs to be done in a systematic and federally registered way. As we saw in last week’s article, when different states or agencies are left to their own devices to track mortality data, it can become a nightmare.

* Mandate Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) Screening: Measuring the problem is one thing, but we actually need to stop the problem. The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists recommends universal screening for intimate partner violence during pregnancy, research indicates that fewer than 30% of women are actually screened. This drops dramatically for Black women, who are at the highest risk. While it can be hard to ask a husband or boyfriend to step out of a room, doctors need to do this and it needs to become a national requirement, not just a recommendation.

With the overturn of Roe v. Wade, more women may become pregnant in America than in recent decades. Abortion pills may be harder to get and contraception may become less accessible. It is incredibly important to improve maternal mortality in America now.

INTERESTING ON THE WEB

* A great breakdown in the 3 different types of housing crises occurring in America - Nolan Gray

* Where are drone attacks occurring in the Russia-Ukraine war and why has it spiked so dramatically - New York Times

* Charts of where federal spending is going and how it has changed from 2015 to 2024 - WSJ

* Unemployment for recent college grads is now higher than it is for all workers. This has only happened a few times in the last 30 years and only for brief periods. A startling trend. - The Atlantic

* A Brookings Institute study on the geography of AI impacts on employment (San Jose and Boulder have the highest exposure - Brookings

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Homelessness is the highest it has ever been in America. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) just released its report showing that more than 770,000 people were homeless in America in 2024. That is a whopping 18% increase from 2023, the largest percentage increase since 2007.

These numbers likely drastically understate the severity of the issue — I should know, because I helped collect these numbers myself for NYC.

Worst of all, homelessness has more than doubled since 2021.

The two primary drivers of the increase are a soaring number of migrants seeking asylum, coupled with rising rents that have far outpaced wages. As pandemic-era programs like rent freezes and cash assistance dried up, people were evicted and left out in the street.

Migration is the leading cause of rising homelessness

The HUD report specifically called out migration as a key driver of the rise in homelessness over the past year. “The rise in overall homelessness was a result of the work to shelter a rising number of asylum seekers coming into communities… Migration has a particularly notable impact on family homelessness, which rose 39% from 2023-24.”

One of the key indicators that migration has been part of the rise is that the number of Latinos experiencing homelessness grew by almost a third, nearly twice the national rate.

Dennis Culhane, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who has long advised the government on homelessness data, said that about three-quarters of the increase in homelessness occurred in the four states hit hardest by asylum seekers — New York, Illinois, Colorado and Massachusetts — along with Hawaii, where wildfires in Maui fueled mass displacement. Absent migration and natural disasters, he said, homelessness would likely have risen by single digits.

Since the report came out, some officials have pushed back saying that the data doesn’t reflect the Biden Administration’s mid-year push to reduce border crossings, which decreased unlawful crossings by 60%.

On the positive side, homelessness among veterans has dropped to the lowest numbers ever recorded. The number fell 8% to 32,882 homeless vets in 2024. Veterans were the only group that HUD tracks which saw a decline in homelessness.

Illinois saw the largest year-over-year increase of any state at 116%. Much of this was driven by a 207% increase in homelessness in the city of Chicago, a city both struggling with a flood of migrants and expensive housing. In 2023 and 2024, Texas governor Greg Abbot sent thousands of migrants to Chicago.

Homelessness in New York and Massachusetts both increased 53% from 2023. Both states have had massive increases in migrants, skyrocketing rental prices, and stagnant wages. Homelessness in Hawaii also increased 87%, largely due to the devastation of the Maui fires.

Rising rents, flat wages

Rents have far outpaced wages across America and the housing supply has not kept up. Economists estimate that the US is currently short 4 million homes for what we would need to house every person and keep prices at a reasonable level. Construction for new homes is chugging along at a glacial pace as zoning laws, the high cost of labor and materials, and regulatory restrictions have stymied many housing-first efforts.

In places like New York City, a 5% increase in rent has been found to increase homelessness by an additional 3,000 residents.

More than a third of people experiencing homelessness — 274,000 — sleep in cars, encampments and tents under bridges. Sleeping outside of shelters is dangerous because it increases both the risk of violence and of illness.

In the chart below, the red line shows the median wage for full-time workers versus rental costs indexed in the early 1980s. This shows that over the last 4 decades, wages have remained relatively flat while rental prices have steadily increased. As long as the red line stayed above the blue line, costs were manageable. But in 2021, not only does the blue line for rental costs jump above the red line for wages, the slope of the line also increases.

“The number of extremely affordable rental units has plummeted in recent years, and this ties back into a housing shortage. Where does that housing shortage squeeze the most? It's going to squeeze the most at the very bottom of the property ladder. Landlords who previously offered very affordable units have seen a great deal of demand for those units. They're able to raise the rents. And so we've seen a lot of people fall off the bottom of the rental market, and that's led to a ton of pressure, especially in expensive markets, and I think in many ways the diagnosis is quite clear that we have this supply-and-demand imbalance,” economist Ben Keys explains.

Seeing the crisis firsthand

I just had the chance to drive around in southern California with a nonprofit as we delivered blankets, jackets, and food to homeless people near the US border. Many of the people were struggling with mental health issues, addiction, alcoholism, but others had just fallen on hard times and were laid off from jobs. While some of the people there were newly homeless, many had been living on the streets for years. I spoke with one man named George who had been living on the street near a bus bench for almost a decade. He graciously accepted the blanket, though we later saw that another homeless man had stolen it from him. The temperatures in this area swing from 100 degrees during the day to 20 degree at night. I knew George had made it this long surviving out in the cold nights, but with more and more homeless people around him, the resources were dwindling, the challenges were growing, and the societal pressures were mounting.

Back in New York City last January, I helped collect the numbers as a volunteer for the point-in-time (PIT) count that now show we have more than 770,000 homeless people in America. As I wrote about back then, the PIT likely drastically undercounts the homeless population in America. For example, the NYC Department of Education estimates that there are 119,300 homelessstudents in New York City; whereas HUD estimates that there are 103,200 homelesspeople in the entire state of New York. The math doesn’t add up.

The Path Forward

The #1 solution for America’s homeless problem is to build more housing. Immigration is an essential part of America’s growth, innovation, and moral values. Stopping the supply of people is not nearly as important as increasing the supply of housing. While it is easy to say ‘build more housing’, here are some specific ways to make that happen:

* Legalize more apartment units: Policymakers need to update zoning laws to legalize the construction of more multi-family apartment units. Restrictive single-family zoning regulations, which currently cover about 75% of residential land, limits dense development that could house more people. Minneapolis and Oregon have successfully implemented zoning reforms to allow duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes in traditionally single-family zones, increasing housing stock. New zoning changes are expected to bring 80,000 new units to New York City alone, a city with over 100,000 homeless.

* Regulatory Streamlining: Streamlining the approval processes for new housing developments would reduce the number of required permits and consolidating review timelines. The National Association of Home Builders estimates that regulatory costs account for approximately 25% of the price of a new home. Simplifying regulations could lower construction costs and accelerate the development of affordable housing. Cities like San Diego have seen success with "by-right" zoning, which allows for faster project approvals, helping to increase the housing supply and reduce homelessness.

* Preventing Evictions: We need to implement stronger eviction protections and rent control measures to keep people housed. Strengthening legal aid for tenants facing eviction, as seen in New York City’s Right to Counsel law, can reduce evictions by up to 77%. During the pandemic, these laws helped millions of Americans stay in their homes.

* Supporting Housing Voucher Holders: We can enhance the effectiveness of housing vouchers by enforcing anti-discrimination laws and increasing landlord participation. Currently, many voucher holders struggle to find landlords willing to accept them due to bias or bureaucratic hurdles. Strengthening and enforcing "source of income" discrimination laws, as done in New Jersey and Washington, D.C., could improve acceptance rates. According to a 2018 HUD study, improving voucher utilization could house an additional 2.6 million families, significantly reducing homelessness and housing instability.

* Addressing The Intersection Of Crises: Walking through a New York City street, the effects of substance use, mental illness, and homelessness are impossible to ignore. A key factor that improves outcomes for unhoused individuals, as well as those struggling with substance use disorders and mental health issues, is stable housing. Organizations like Fountain House play a vital role by implementing social practice in clubhouses worldwide, ensuring individuals receive community support and psychosocial services like housing and employment. In addition to more support to a holistic approach, cities and states must act urgently to reinforce and stabilize the housing network. Strengthening these initiatives will help reduce substance use, severe mental illness, and other health challenges among the unhoused.

INTERESTING ON THE WEB

* What makes the US exceptional, in charts - LINK

* 10 charts that explain 2024 - LINK

* Drug deaths from Black men show a surprising trend - LINK

* Our life expectancy map featured in Forbes - LINK

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Samera Hadi identifies as Yemeni American, but explains that “the categories of the Census don’t speak to my identity as Arab or, more specifically, Yemeni. I don’t walk through this world as a white person, I don’t get those privileges as a white person, I don’t have white culture.” For every Census , Samera would have been categorized as White. That might all change in 2030.

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Samera wears a headscarf and is from San Jose, California. She recently moved to Chicago and began working with high school age refugee girls seeking educational and social support. She also has two daughters of her own and is trying to help them understand their identities as they grow up in a diverse city that welcomes them but in a country that doesn’t always recognize them in official measures and categories.

On November 18, the Census Bureau put out a call asking for help defining race and ethnicity. Bureau demographers started to work on the 2030 census and explained, “Public feedback on the code list is essential to making sure future data on race/ethnicity groups accurately reflect our nation’s diverse population.” The main request the Census made was for people to submit identity groups that might be missing​ from the code list.

At a time when ‘identity’ and identity politics are such fixtures of our national conversation and when the census is trying to understand what all the different identities might be, I thought I’d try to understand where some of this might be headed. The way we categorize identities might be driving our growing divides. Or it might be missing the picture altogether.

A long awaited new category

A new category is coming to the 2030 census that advocates have been championing for over three decades: Middle Eastern or North African (MENA). Matthew Stiffler, a University of Michigan lecturer on Arab American studies, explained, “The MENA community fought to be white in the early parts of the 1900s and they achieved that, but as politics and world affairs developed later that century and into the 2000s, it became clear that Arab and MENA folks were not going to be treated as white.” The Census estimates that more than 4 million people will select this category in the 2030 census.

Perhaps most importantly, the census is used as the #1 source for allocating funds both in the private and public sectors. Federal funding for many social services and apportioning House seats all comes from the Census. The budget documents for SNAP, Medicaid, Housing Choice Vouchers, and the main programs for childcare and job training rely on census data. Marketing, advertising, and eCommerce companies rely on census data to identify different populations in certain regions they are trying to serve.

Changing with the times

Identity categories are not immutable. The 1790 census had just 5 categories, with two of them including ‘slaves’ and ‘all other free persons’. Prior to 2000, the census did not permit people to list mixed or multiple racial identities.

The updates to the Census try to reflect the current identities of the nation, but those changes have created some unexpected pushback. Recent social-psychological research reveals that many whites react negatively to the idea of a majority-minority society and assert more conservative attitudes because of it. When white people realize that other racial groups are occupying a larger share of the population, this has a causal effect in making the white people more conservative.

We can’t change what we can’t measure

This past spring, I was speaking at Georgetown and a student raised his hand and asked something I had never heard, “Isn’t the chart only telling a narrow part of the story?” he asked. “Why are you not including other demographics like Asians or Native Americans?” I had pulled up one of my charts showing Black vs. White vs. Hispanic homeownership rates over the last 30 years. I had published this chart 2 years earlier and used it in dozens of presentations to show that Black home ownership rates are consistently half those of White homeownership.

The student was right in many ways, but my challenge was that I was just reflecting a perhaps bigger issue. The Federal Reserve has never published homeownership data on Native Americans and only in 2016 did it start publishing data on Asian homeownership, though this was lumped together with Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders. The only data going back to 1994 was for these 3 demographics of Black, White, and Hispanic.

We cannot change what we cannot see. When policymakers, economists, and politicians don’t know how bad an issue is for a certain population, they may never be able to enact meaningful change for that group. This is especially important now when every project needs to be able to prove its efficacy.

Who does the Census identify?

The code list has 7,054 terms that stretch across 8 main categories - White, Hispanic or Latino, Black or African American, Asian, American Indian or Alaska Native, Middle Eastern or North African, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, or Some Other Race and/or ethnicity. Within these 8 main categories, there are many sub-sections that drive the distinctions.

* Nationalities (e.g., Chinese, Argentinean).

* Transnational groups (e.g., Roma, Hmong).

* Ethno-religious responses (e.g., Sikh, Chaldean).

* Subnational ethnic groups (e.g., Igbo, Sicilian).

* Pan-ethnic terms (e.g., Arab, Latino).

* Broad geographic terms (e.g., European, African).

* Terms indicating Multiracial/Multiethnic responses (e.g., Mixed, Multiracial).

* Federally and state-recognized tribes and villages, unrecognized tribes, and general terms for tribes in the United States (e.g., Navajo Nation, Cherokee).

* Canadian First Nations and Central and South American Indian groups (e.g., Brokenhead Ojibway Nation, Maya).

These different categories also make a huge difference for how Americans see themselves. As 538 explains, “The first significant release of the 2020 census data arrived in August, and it paints a picture of America unlike any we have ever seen before. The share of Americans who identify as white fell 11 percentage points, from 72% to 62%, while the number of Americans who identify as multiracial more than tripled, from nearly 3% in 2010 to over 10% in 2020.” This was not due to massive shifts in demographics over the 10 year period.

America’s largest ethnic group is German. Or maybe it is English. If you want to understand why we might not actually know, despite a change to the 2020, read this incredible act of journalism by our friend of American Inequality and data journalist Andrew Van Dam.

Gender identity and sexual orientation

The census is also evaluating whether to ask about sexual orientation and gender identity. Earlier in 2024, Census officials sent out hundreds of thousands of ballots and opened up a comment period as well to understand what language would be sufficient for asking this question and whether it brought back responses that could be useful. The trial questionnaire is testing “degenderizing” questions about relationships in a household by changing options like “biological son” or “biological daughter” to “biological child.” On the sexual orientation question, respondents can provide a write-in response if they don’t see themselves in the gay or lesbian, straight or bisexual options.

One way to view this is that politics drives data. Data is not ‘objective’ – we create the categories. We decide what to measure. In this case, one could argue that the questions are becoming less detailed (i.e. removing categories) in favor of a more gender neutral category that doesn’t label a child in a certain way.

The Path Forward

Data is never perfect. But the Census is such an important measure that we need to get it as right as we can. Here are a few things I realized along the way of writing this piece.

* Improve multiracial categories: Most of the multiracial categories are large catch-alls right now. The different options are - Multicultural. Multiracial. Biracial. Some other race or ethnicity. In 1980, just 5% of US children had mixed parentage, compared with 16% four decades later. Much evidence suggests that racial diversity within family units will increase. These broad categories create both confusion and probably underrepresent the growth of multiracial communities in America.

* Expand ethno-religious categories: Religious minorities need better protections and without proper identification of those groups it can be hard to fund those programs or clarify who we are talking about. The Census currently has categories of Copt/Coptic, Sikh, Hindu, Druze, and Yazidis to name a few. Advocates have long argued that Ashkenazi, Zoroastrians, or Igbo ought to be included. Most of these groups typically use the ‘ancestry’ category to delineate these, but write-ins often create data challenges.

* Don’t do what the French did: In 1978, the French government banned censuses on race and ethnic origin. The law was passed because these types of lists were used during WW2 to round up French jews (though I couldn’t figure out why it took the French more than 30 years to pass the law then — definitely leave a comment or email back here if you know). The language of the law advocates making France a ‘color-blind’ country. French policymakers will instead focus on geographic regions to advance different socioeconomic goals, which can get close as we know #maps. The US has a very different history, one that involves slavery, internment camps, destruction of native lands, and ethnic quotas. Not looking at a problem doesn’t make it go away. The census should continue to expand its categories, not follow the French model that has made race a social taboo.

INTERESTING ON THE WEB

* My life as a homeless man in America. Stories from Rhode Island - Esquire

* Everybody loves FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data). I can tell you that I too am in love and if you’re not yet, you should be - NYTimes

* What makes the US truly unique, as shown in some great charts - FT

* One organization distributed 5.3 billion meals to hungry Americans in 2023. Why can’t we feed people in the richest nation in the world? - NYTimes

* We helped raise $560,000 dollars in our GiveDirectly campaign for families in Rwanda - Campaign

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Eggs are Eggspensive

The cost of eggs is too high. Before the pandemic, the cost of a dozen eggs was $1.53 on average across the US. As of October 2024, the cost has more than doubled to $3.53. Even adjusting for inflation, the cost of eggs has gone up 50% in the last year. This one product seemed to be a rallying point for how expensive everyday goods had become in America (perhaps because Americans ate more eggs in this past year than they ever had before, at 279 per person per year). But certain regions in the US felt these rising costs more than others, and it might explain why some people’s views of the country are shifting.

8 of the 10 most expensive counties in America are major metropolitan areas. New York City. San Francisco. The DC area. You don’t need a data scientist to tell you that living in New York City is going to be more expensive than in Jackson, Mississippi. However, the Bureau of Economic Analysis just published this county level data mapped above for the first time ever, revealing what might be happening outside of our traditional views of the country.

New data and the view from Michigan

The new dataset looks at 3 categories of costs - housing, utilities, and goods and services. Goods include food prices by place and the average cost of a meal in that area. The researchers use a ‘basket of goods’ approach which basically looks like filling a giant shopping cart of groceries in every single county in America and figuring out how much the prices differ in each region (i.e. how expensive was this carton of milk, box of cereal, ground beef, in Mobile, Alabama vs. Anchorage, Alaska).

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The major categories of cost of living includes groceries, housing, education, childcare, and healthcare costs. We’ve done a survey of all of these in the past so today I’m just going to deep-dive into groceries and housing because they have become flashpoints in American politics.

Leelanau County, Michigan has the lowest purchasing power of any county in America. Located at the pinky of the mitten of Michigan, this region of 22,000 residents is very difficult to get to, increasing transportation and import costs. These two factors are some of the most significant drivers of increased grocery costs across the US. Strangely enough, for all of the counties in Michigan north of Grand Rapids, Leelanau was one of only two to go for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. For many Trump-voting Americans, their purchasing power and the cost of living seemed to be the biggest factor behind their votes.

Ty Wessell has been writing a column called ‘Invisible Leelanau’ for nearly a decade. Ty writes about people who are referred to as ALICE’s - Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. The community has jobs, but 43% can’t afford a $1,000 emergency expense. Amidst the pristine blue lakes and expansive farms, young mothers and dads wait tables and repair cars to avoid slipping deeper into poverty.

Cities swing Right

In the map above, we can see the cities have become far more expensive relative to changes in other parts of the US. This may explain why republicans saw double-digit gains in every major American city. 19 points in Miami-Dade County, 16 points in New York City, 14 points in Los Angeles County, 12 in Suffolk County (Boston), 11 points in Cook County (Chicago), 10 in Dallas County, and 9 in Wayne County (Detroit).

Inflation, wages and the cost of groceries

Wages have grown faster than inflation on average over the last 14 years. However, during a brief 2-year period between 2021 and 2023, inflation spiked and that pain stuck with consumers for years. While the Federal Reserve and policymakers were able to bring that under control, the memory of it loomed large in Americans’ minds. This may be why 52% of Americans say they are financially worse off today than they were 4 years ago according to a recent Gallup Poll. They had apparently also forgotten about the tremendous wage growth during the pandemic.

But for low-income workers, those rising wages have not been sufficient. One of the most shocking statistics I have ever come across in this work is that the federal hourly minimum wage for workers who make tips is… $2.13. Before the pandemic, that could buy you a carton of eggs. But now, not so much. 43% of restaurant workers earn less than $30,000. When California increased the minimum wage for service workers in 2024, the day after the legislation was passed those same restaurants increased all the prices for their goods. This hurt those workers even more so because they typically rely on the cheaper fast foods at McDonalds, Chipotle, and Wendy's. Low-income families have been hit hardest by rising grocery prices. They spend 31% of their income on food, compared with 8% for wealthier families.

Bill Gates has no idea what is happening

If you’ve never seen this 2018 video of Bill Gates guessing the prices of regular supermarket groceries, it’s a must. It’s a fascinating snapshot into the disconnect that the ultra wealthy have from the cost of everyday goods. During a 1992 debate between George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Bush had to admit that he had no idea what the price of milk was, a gaff that hurt his campaign for months. In the beginning, Ellen Degeneres explains that for every product he guesses correctly within a dollar, the audience will win a prize (applause from the audience), and if he guesses every price correctly, Ellen will pay off all of his children’s student loans. “No danger there,” Gates quips.

Corporate profits are not to blame

Over the last 40 years, retail food prices had the largest increase that economists had ever observed. Prices rose 11% from 2021-2022. There is a strong debate about the role that corporate profits have played in this price increase. On one

hand, operating profits of food and beverage retail stores rose from $14 billion in 2019 to $25 billion in 2023, a 79% increase. Two of the main drivers of this, according to researchers from the Federal Reserve, are rising commodity prices and people just buying more groceries.

Commodity prices soared when supply chains with Ukraine and Russia were disrupted during the war, as both countries are among the largest wheat producers in the world. Grocery stores charged higher prices to respond to the rising costs of their inputs.

At the same time, the pandemic created a groundswell of at-home chefs. People stopped eating out as much and learned to cook more. Instead of paying restaurants, they paid grocery stores. The number of customers shot up.

But large corporate grocery stores aren’t taking advantage of geopolitical turmoil or the pandemic as we can see from their margins. Grocery store margins remained unchanged from 2019 to 2023. If grocery stores were making 1 cent per carton of eggs at a price of $1.53 before the pandemic, they were still only making 1 cent per carton of eggs at a price of $3.53 after the pandemic. Reports from the Federal Reserve and the White House Council of Economic Advisers found that even when margins did rise in some areas, they largely tracked overall inflation or weren’t meaningfully contributing to the overall rise in prices.

Eggs won’t break the bank, but housing will

Housing is a much larger expense than groceries when it comes to cost of living, and this is really weighing on communities. 1 in 4 Americans spends more than 50% of their income on rent, despite the federal recommendation that no household spend more than 30% of their income on rent. 8 million people work multiple jobs and 400,000 work two full-time jobs, which still hardly covers the cost of a 2-bedroom in most states given the state minimum wage and the average rental cost. Groceries are an everyday pain, which can make rising prices feel bad. But eggs are unlikely to break the bank, especially since groceries are 13% of a person’s overall budget. The real culprit is housing.

Housing unaffordability is both a legacy of COVID and a policy choice. When global supply chains seized up during the pandemic, housing construction plummeted and prices rose. Now that the US has brought more manufacturing onshore and opened up new trade channels, policy decisions to maintain single-family zoning, parking minimums, and insufficient affordable housing stock measures have still hampered a housing rebound.

Renters have it the worst. Dennis Culhane, a professor of social policy at the University of Pennsylvania and specialist on housing spoke to us an shared, “Low income renters with severe rent burdens has reached record levels, affecting 8.5 million households. The problem is nationwide, but especially acute in areas like Seattle, Los Angeles, Denver, Miami and New York City.”

The Path Forward

Several factors led to price increases which were largely outside of US public, private, or nonprofit sector control. The war in Russia and Ukraine. The COVID-19 pandemic. Supply chain issues like in the Suez Canal and US ports. We need to put more money into people’s pockets while bringing down the cost of groceries.

* ⬆️ Raise the federal minimum wage to $15 - The current federal minimum wage of $7.25 was established in 2009 amidst the panic of the Great Recession. While 29 states have raised the wages above this, that leaves 31 states that rely on this floor. One of the primary arguments against raising the minimum wage is that it would increase unemployment. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 1.4 million jobs would be lost from a $15 minimum wage — The argument goes that, with a fixed pie, employers would have to lay off workers to maintain their other workers at a higher rate. In the same paragraph though, the CBO also estimates that it would lift nearly 1 million people out of poverty and increase pay for low-income earners by $504 billion.

* ⛓️ Create private sector supply chain resilience: The #1 driver of the increase in grocery costs has been supply chain issues. Almost every activity after the food leaves the farm - transporting, packaging and processing food products - has contributed the lion’s share of rising grocery costs. One McKinsey report outlined specific steps for companies to diversify their suppliers and support better forecasting for ‘what if’ scenarios that seem to be far more common now. What if the port workers strike? What if we have a 100-year flood every 5 years? What if a bird flu wipes out production? This will not only ensure that grocery stores stay stocked, but that housing materials like lumber remain in adequate supply.

* 🏫 funding for New Markets Tax Credits - New Markets Tax Credits (NMTCs) have been one of America’s most successful policies for encouraging new development in underserved areas. Although NMTCs are not exclusively focused on food deserts, they have helped fund the creation of over 300 supermarkets in food deserts in recent years. 44 million people who are food insecure and 23.5 million live in food deserts. If America cannot support existing infrastructure or put more money into people’s pockets, new grocery stores in rural areas that might have higher costs due to transit or supply chains could help make food more affordable for those communities.

INTERESTING ON THE WEB

* 🏦 For the first time, just 4% of U.S. households are unbanked. A record low and down from a peak of 8.2% in 2011 - FinTech Collective

* 🗺️ VERY detailed map of how everyone voted in NYC. Does your city have something like this- The City

* 💸 Initial findings from a cash-infusion prescription program in Flint, Michigan for pregnant women and children in poverty. Effectively eliminated deep child poverty - GiveDirectly

* How paperwork keeps people in poverty - Vox

* 📚 I’m writing a book! Follow along here for some more dedicated updates. I sent out my first note to readers this past weekend

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