Topics
Category Archives: Inequality
Kids Count datapoint of the day: child poverty
CAHS will release the 2012 Kids Count data book April 30th at 1 pm in an event at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford. Join us! In 2004, Connecticut was the first state to set a goal to reduce child … Continue reading
Posted in Inequality, KIDS Count, State Policy
Tagged Child poverty, Data point of the day, KIDS Count
Leave a comment
The main source of income inequality: luck
Charles Kenny has a very smart article today in Bloomberg Business Week (of all places) talking about one of the main drivers of income inequality worldwide: sheer, pure, dumb luck. First step in this “being lucky” ladder, of course, is … Continue reading
Posted in Early Care and Education, Inequality
Tagged Inequality, silver --- spoon!, social mobility
Leave a comment
The high cost of income inequality
The Global Post has a lengthy, dense interview with Joseph Stiglitz about inequality. According to the Nobel-prize winning economist, inequality is damaging not just for the poor, but for society as a whole: Globalization, as it has been managed, has … Continue reading
Child Hunger. Even here. And getting worse.
A big headline fronts a great article on the Connecticut Healty-I-Team website today : “Childhood Hunger Rises Even In Wealthy, Rural Towns“. This is the sad reality in many communities in Connecticut in the past few years. The long recession, … Continue reading
Posted in Inequality, Numbers and data, State Policy
Tagged Childhood poverty, Food Security, hunger, safety net, school meals
Leave a comment
The ECS formula: why is broken, why it is important
With all the talk and worry about the state’s dire fiscal situation one important discussion has gone unnoticed this month: the Education Cost Sharing (ECS) formula task force. The ECS formula is one of those crucially forgotten but incredibly important … Continue reading
Posted in Early Care and Education, Inequality, State Policy
1 Comment
When talking about poverty, policy matters
Jonathan Cohn, in the New Republic, has a fascinating article comparing how states compare regarding anti-poverty programs and its results. On one side, Cohn puts all “blue states” the ones that have voted reliably democrat since 2000. On the other … Continue reading
Posted in Fiscal policy, Inequality, State Policy
Tagged Poverty, safety net, self-sufficiency
Leave a comment
Actually, people do die for lack of health insurance
Conservatives have been asserting this past week that having health insurance is really not that important. Mitt Romney has mentioned in a couple of interviews than people do not die because have health insurance; if someone gets ill, they always … Continue reading
Posted in Federal Policy, Health Care, Inequality
Tagged health access, health care, health outcomes, Insurance
Leave a comment
Why counting health benefits as income makes sense
The New York Times had a very interesting article yesterday talking about something that looks fairly irrelevant: are health care benefits income? In July, the Congressional Budget Office — the nonpartisan arbiter of the costs and consequences of government spending … Continue reading
Posted in Federal Policy, Inequality, Numbers and data
Tagged Data, health care, medicaid, Poverty
Leave a comment
“Tax breaks for the rich don’t grow jobs,” and policy options to turn the tide
Today’s CT Mirror reports on a Congressional Research Service report, concluding that cutting taxes to the wealthy has not been shown to increase the number of jobs, and in fact is contributing to the widening income divide: “A congressional research … Continue reading
Posted in Federal Policy, Fiscal policy, Inequality, State Policy
Leave a comment
What a tax fight tells us about our broken property tax system
The latest row over the property taxes at a big residential development in downtown New Haven looks like a fairly local issue. A big new 32 floor building, 360 State Street was recently hit with an unexpectedly steep property reevaluation. … Continue reading
Posted in Fiscal policy, Inequality, State Policy
Tagged ECS formula, Inequality, Property taxes, taxation
Leave a comment