
The Unequal Recovery: Measuring Financial Distress by Zip Code - howard941
https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/first-quarter-2019/unequal-recovery-measuring-financial-distress
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panarky
The upshot is that aggregate measures obscure what's really happening when
there's a wide range of observations.

On average, wealth has increased since the Great Recession, but dis-aggregate
the data and you'll find that many communities aren't very healthy.

This study dis-aggregates by zip code, and if you could further decomp into
neighborhoods I'm sure you'd see much greater disparities.

But what does this ultimately say that we didn't already know? That the US is
an extraordinarily unequal society? That the "recovery" was captured by some
and left others behind?

Taking this to the next logical analytical step would be really powerful. How
does this economic recovery compare with prior recoveries? When the next
recession hits, who will bear the heaviest burden? Do the communities hurt
most also show other signs of distress like lower life expectancy, higher
crime rates, etc.? Is there a causal relationship we can detect?

If so, what are the implications for fiscal and monetary policy?

~~~
Simon_says
> the "recovery" was captured by some

As if there's a finite amount of wealth that just gets divided unequally. No.
Some people made the world better than they found it.

~~~
foota
This is a little strong of a statement for me. Sure, the economy isn't a zero
sum game, but that doesn't mean that it automatically benefits everyone
equally

~~~
Simon_says
True. But I said "some people".

It's not everyone, but the typical millionaire in the US became a millionaire
by producing a lot of value for somebody else.

~~~
Simon_says
I guess the socialists are out in force today.

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chiph
I expected the differences to fall along rural/urban zip codes, but that's not
true - there are significant differences in financial health in rural areas as
well as urban areas (going by their chart). It's got to be cultural in some
fashion.

~~~
lukego
Or statistical noise. This is exactly what you would expect to see if the data
were sliced up and compared using a loose significance threshold like 'p<0.05'
instead of a tight one like 'p<(0.05/numberOfZipcodes)'. They don't seem to
specify this?

See also "Justify your alpha"
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-018-0311-x](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-018-0311-x)

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os7borne
Indian lenders have been doing this for a long time. They deny loans to
borrowers from certain pincodes, provide loans with lower limits or higher
interest rates etc.

~~~
sgift
Happens in Germany too. It is illegal if that's the only criteria, but hard to
enforce cause most banks will tell you that they used their "judgement" to
decide.

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lukego
I have a couple of questions about their methodology.

How are they accounting for multiple comparisons in their tests for
statistical significance? The answer had better be really good because they
are making a /lot/ of significance tests at once.

How come it is reasonable to estimate the average household wealth as the
median multiplied by the total number of households? This is novel to me and
intuitively it seems dubious.

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philshem
On using zip codes, and nearly masking the Flint water crisis:

[http://theconversation.com/how-zip-codes-nearly-masked-
the-l...](http://theconversation.com/how-zip-codes-nearly-masked-the-lead-
problem-in-flint-65626)

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itronitron
given that red and blue are used to color states and counties by political
party it would have been better if they used a gray scale to show % of
households in economic distress. Also, geographically larger counties tend to
be more sparsely populated so the graphic could be further improved by showing
raw counts of households in distress instead of percentages.

~~~
whenchamenia
So they should fit their data to your bias? There are no red/blue states, just
people. Party political pidgenholing is vile and needs to leave HN.

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readhn
average millennials net worth is only $8K (group aged 18-35 today) so this is
not surprising to me.

in 20-25 years, when millennials approach retirement age - its not going to
look pretty for the economy.

~~~
malandrew
It’s only not going to be pretty if you don’t take into account 30-40 years of
technological advances. Healthcare advances and food science advances will
both usher in higher quality that is more accessible at lower prices. Advances
in energy show make energy cheaper. Eventually the boomers will die, putting
lots of housing on the market making it available to millennials.

Between that you’ve got most major costs addressed, housing, healthcare, food
and utilities.

Retirement may not be achievable at 65 anymore but they are going to be
hitting 65 much healthier than any prior generation so working past 65 won’t
be the same burden as it was for someone who did hard physical labor their
entire lives.

They are literally going to be the generation that has had it easiest, but
they are going to feel like they’ve had it hardest.

The biggest problem isn’t savings but the fact that so many eschew the type of
labor necessary to maintain the infrastructure they are inheriting. Without
plumbers, electricians and other technical trades, much of the infrastructure
they inherit may have greatly deteriorated due to long overdue deferred
maintenance.

~~~
Qwertystop
Healthcare advances in the _past_ few decades have gone hand-in-hand with
healthcare _costs_ rising much faster than inflation, at least in the US.
Better medicine you can't afford doesn't help much.

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samstave
Im so freaking mad that the .gov isnt even doing such data analysis as a
matter of course.

This just illustrates how fucking stupid the government is

The government is, by definition, big data.

Such morons. Ajit pai should be drawn and quartered.

And shame on SV for being complicit.

Look at the following: palantir went hiding in its sleazy shell, YC defends
them; yet we have a completely new industry vertical coming on line (cannabis)
and we are all letting the same tropes fall in to place ... and the dialog on
HN is crickets.

Here we have the biggest emerging market and YC acts like it doesnt exist....

The reason this is pertinent is that look at the consumption of flower/pens by
demo? (I have done so... ) - look at financial distress cs medicating on that
via dispensaries etc... i have the data to determine but not the time
(building out our footprint is huge)

