Called the American Dream, the income mobility that lifts a child beyond a parent’s poverty can depend on a community’s characteristics.
How Chocolate Chip Cookies Explain Why We Save Less
Explained by behavioral economics, we save relatively little for retirement because of intertemporal selfishness and seeing our future selves as strangers.
A Mystery: Trying to Find the Middle Class
While everyone refers to the middle class and most of us say we are in the middle class, few know the characteristics of the group to which they refer.
How Men Act When They Outnumber Women
How gender ratios in the U.S. and China affect men’s financial behavior can be explained with supply and demand and behavioral economics from Gary Becker.
Understanding a New Tax Issue
With the House requiring dynamic scoring of tax legislation from the CBO, the bigger tax debate resurfaces on how much redistribution and spending.
What a Blind Taste Test Showed About Beer
Behavioral economic ideas show that product differentiation and consumer preference are more from branding than the taste of colas or beers.
Why Academy Award Winners Might Live Longer
Relating income inequality to the stress felt by low status Bolivian Tsimane men and academy award losers, researchers said that stress that harms health.
Four Ways to Understand Marijuana Demand
With an increasing number of states legalizing marijuana, demand is shifting because of changes in utility, complementary products and the number of buyers.
An Economist’s Definition of Misery
While a misery index shows a nation’s inflation and unemployment rates, the eurozone’s high unemployment might create disproportionate unhappiness.
Why There is Less Marriage
New attitudes that value marriage less and new economics through which women have more pay and education and men work less have changed marriage markets.