Charts of the Week: Population, earnings, time use

The charts below are related to demographics: where people live, how much they earn, and how they spend their time.

CALIFORNIA LIKELY TO LOSE A HOUSE SEAT IN 2020 CONGRESSIONAL REAPPORTIONMENT, TEXAS TO GAIN 3

U.S. states will gain, lose, or retain seats in the U.S. House of Representatives following the reapportionment after the 2020 Census. Senior Fellow William Frey extrapolates from recent data to show these changes after a year (2018-19) of the slowest population growth since 1918. “Because this reapportionment also affects the Electoral College,” Frey writes, “it might be seen as favoring Republicans, given that states gaining more seats voted for President Trump in 2016.” However, Frey observes that “a good part of recent population growth in Texas, Florida, Arizona, and North Carolina should continue to be from the Democratic-leaning voting blocs of Latinos or Hispanics, African Americans, and Asian Americans, as well as white college graduates moving from blue states such as California and New York. Thus, it is difficult to predict the decade-long political ramifications of the 2020 census’s congressional reapportionment.”

MIDDLE CLASS INCOME GROWTH IS FALLING BEHIND THOSE AT THE BOTTOM AND THE TOP

While U.S. population growth is slowing, the average income growth for the richest Americans has been pulling away from all the rest over the past decades. Richard Reeves and Christopher Pulliam examined recent Congressional Budget Office data on incomes and observed that “the top 1% have been pulling away.” But even taking the top 1% out of the picture, Reeves and Pulliam noted stagnation in middle class incomes, which “have lagged since 1979, growing just half as fast as those in the bottom 20% and the top 81-99%, once taxes and transfers (including health care) are taken into account.”

HOW ADULTS SPEND THEIR TIME

The Hamilton Project’s Lauren Bauer and Emily Moss examine data from the American Time Use Survey on how prime-age (ages 25–54) men and women, who are not students, use their time. “Unsurprisingly,” they write, “the days of prime-age men and women who work look quite different from those who are unemployed or out of the labor force.” They add that “Employed men spend more time on market work than employed women but employed women spend one more hour per day than employed men on nonmarket labor and caregiving.”  Visit their blog for complete data.