31/5/19: Generational Gap in Self-reported Satisfaction with Life is at Whooping 28 percentage points

Commonly discussed in the media and amongst economists, generational gap in quality of life and socio-economic environments is also evident in the self-reported satisfaction with life surveys. Here is the recent data from Gallup (link: https://news.gallup.com/poll/246326/six-seven-americans-satisfied-personal-lives.aspx) released back in February 2019:

In 2017, 57% of Americans of all ages were very satisfied and 30% somewhat satisfied with their lives. This remained relatively stable in 2019 poll (56% and 30%, respectively). However, over the same period of time percentage of those in the age group of 18-29 year old reporting their status as "very satisfied" with their lives dropped from 56% to 40%, and for the group of those aged 30-49 years, the corresponding decline was from 58% to 55%. In 2007 through 2011, generational gap was at a maximum point 8 percentage points wide. This rose to 16 percentage points in 2013, before blowing up to a massive 28 percentage point by 2019.

26/10/18: Visualizing Mental Health Around the World and Across Time

Mental health is one of the key parameters of the quality of social and personal environment we can think of, and changes in the prevalence and the impact of mental health are hugely important measures of socio-economic evolution. Here is a fascinating set of data visualizations and analytical notes on the state of mental health around the world and across the recent decades: https://ourworldindata.org/mental-health.

There are thousands of interesting, and often non-intuitive, observations one can draw from these interactive charts and from the published analysis.

11/4/18: Social Mobility in the U.S.: Another Chunk of the Facade Goes Down

Via @QZ - share of young Americans living with parents and grandparents is now back to the WW2 levels:

Source: https://qz.com/1248081/the-share-of-americans-age-25-29-living-with-parents-is-the-highest-in-75-years/

No kidding. 33 trillion dollars of economic rescues/stimuli/QE etc and the Great Recovery, the Bull Economy, the Zero Unemployment Goldilocks Era, the MAGA thingy all are a straight line up to rising rates of inter-family subsidies.

19/2/2013: Japan's Woes: 3 recent posts

Some excellent blogposts on Japan's problems via Economonitor:

1) All exports and money printing can't offset Japan's debt, ageing and domestic demand woes: http://www.economonitor.com/edwardhugh/2013/02/12/japans-looming-singularity/?utm_source=contactology&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=EconoMonitor%20Highlights%3A%20End%20Games

2) Does end of growth (Japan's example) spell end of high quality of life? http://www.economonitor.com/dolanecon/2013/02/15/growth-and-quality-of-life-what-can-we-learn-from-japan/

3) Japan's forgotten (but not fully unwound) debt bubble: http://www.economonitor.com/blog/2013/01/the-setting-sun-japans-forgotten-debt-problems/

All worth a read.

I can add that in 2011 Quality of Life Index by International Living magazine, ranking 191 countries around the world, Japan was in 7th place (rank range is between 7th and 10th), whilst Ireland was in 20th (rank range between 20th and 26th) in terms of overall quality of life, with Japan outperforming Ireland in 4 out of 9 categories of parameters on which the rankings were based and tying Ireland in one category. (link to full rankings)

Note: the above rankings did throw some strange results, so careful reading into them.