In his latest "Being Andrew Sullivan" post on his own blog, Dan Drezner expresses some concerns about an item he posted yesterday on AndrewSullivan.com:
On this post, I also link to the Easterbrook book, but I'll admit to wavering. I've been a big fan of Easterbrook's policy analysis in the past, particularly this TNR essay that's a key component of the new book. Last week, however, I made the mistake of linking to an Easterbrook post about the environment when it turned out he'd screwed up an important fact (he has yet to correct it). In this case, however, he appears to be standing on the shoulders of other researchers, so I go with it.
Prompted by Dan's skepticism (and my own disappointment with Easterbrook's book, about which more later), I checked the two sources Easterbrook cites on the relevant page of his book: this study by Steven Camarota, director of research at the anti-immigration Center for Immigration Studies, and this study by Federal reserve economists Ana M. Aizcorbe, Arthur B. Kennickell, and Kevin B. Moore.
Based on a superficial reading, I have no quarrel with either study's factual conclusions. I also find Easterbrook's claim that "Factor out immigration, and the rise in American inequality disappears" both politically appealing and factually plausible. But the studies he cites don't say this. They don't contradict that conclusion, but neither do they back it. They don't even talk about equality.
The CIS study is about poverty rates (and, in fact, Easterbrook cites it only on that subject). The Fed study, which appears from the footnotes to be Easterbrook's source, looks at household income and wealth figures and does not break out separate data for immigrants. The positive trends for African Americans come from the Fed study, but those trends measure absolute levels, not inequality. In short, it would take more data and more careful econometrics to demonstrate Easterbrook's bold conclusion.
Perhaps Easterbrook has done a lot of calculations he doesn't include in the book, though I have no reason to think he has the necessary technical skills. (Neither do I.) Perhaps he is jumping to a logical, but unsupported, conclusion.
Or perhaps he good-heartedly does not understand the difference between "equality" and "income levels." Poor people can get a lot richer while inequality increases if the affluent get richer even faster. (Indeed, tables in the Fed study show the mean income of people in the top 10 percent of households pulling away from the median from 1995 to 2001, which suggests that the very, very richest people are getting much richer; in other income categories, the medians and means roughly track each other.) When everyone gets richer but the top 1% get rich fastest, everyone enjoys a higher standard of living. But Paul Krugman can still write articles about the horrible increase in inequality. |
