Jeremy 'adjusted for inflation' Horpedahl 📈 Profile picture
Dad, Economist, and Arkansan. Associate Professor @UCAbusiness, Director @ACRE_UCA, but these tweets are mine alone.
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Jan 24 7 tweets 3 min read
Major update to the Generational Wealth chart. Based on the updated SCF data, young people have a lot more wealth than we had previously thought.

Millennials and Gen Z have dramatically more wealth than Gen X had at the same age, and it's growing fast!

economistwritingeveryday.com/2024/01/24/you…
Image Using the 2019 SCF data as the benchmark, wealth of Millennials and Gen Z was dramatically understated in 2023. The 2022 SCF update increased their wealth in 2023 by over 50%
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Nov 12, 2023 8 tweets 2 min read
The average hourly wage in 1947 was about $1 per hour, meaning it took 12.5 hours to buy these groceries. With 12.5 hours of work at the average wage ($29) today, you would have $350 -- more than enough for 2 weeks of groceries Image The average family of 4 spent $8,000 on groceries in 2022 -- about $150 per week

Source: bls.gov/cex/tables/cal…
Nov 9, 2023 11 tweets 4 min read
This is an important trend, but note that the biggest factor driving the decline in fertility is the drop in the teen birthrate.
Image The decline in teen birth rates after 1990 is important to understand in context. The teen birth rate had been falling for decades after the Baby Boom. But then in the late 1980s, it began to creep back up again. This was seen as a crisis. For example, this Time cover from 1985
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Nov 7, 2023 5 tweets 2 min read
New paper by @PhilWMagness, @MarcusWitcher, and me on the Great Depression as presented in college-level economics and history textbooks. History textbooks not only differ from econ textbooks, they present "causes" that are at odds with current research

economics-finance.org/jefe/issues/JE…
Image Econ textbooks focus on monetary factors and aggregate demand (and to some extent, protectionism) Image
Sep 11, 2023 5 tweets 2 min read
5.5 million views for a completely misleading graph. The rent line isn't inflation adjusted, the income line is inflation adjusted

Can we get a @CommunityNotes on this, please? It's the bread tweet all over again!

May 8, 2023 8 tweets 3 min read
This very viral video is based on false statistics.
She claims that new college grads were making $33,700 in the early 1980s, and then adjusts this for inflation to $102,000

But the $33,700 was already adjusted for inflation! It was $15,200

dailydot.com/news/college-s… Best I can tell, this is the likely source, or if it isn't her source, it's still a good one. Recent college grads made $15,200 in 1981. Oddly, she picked a dollar figure that was already inflation-adjusted, but in 2006 dollars (?)

nces.ed.gov/programs/diges…
Apr 23, 2023 6 tweets 2 min read
Have you heard that Fannie and Freddie are changing the fee structure for mortgages? You may have heard that buyers with bad credit are being "subsidized" by those with good credit. That's false. See the column I circled in the table. Better credit still gets lower fees! Image So what's changed? They have *flattened* the fee structure. Here's the old table (still in place through this month), with the same column circled, for 15-20% down.

Fees go up for those with good credit in May, and they go down for those with worse credit Image
Jan 9, 2023 7 tweets 2 min read
Thousands of what? 16 year-olds dying suddenly? Certainly not. So what is it?

Do they mean heart disease deaths among young Americans? Here's the data for ages 15-39. You'll notice there was an increase (I truncated the y-axis to show detail), but it STARTED IN 2020 There were a lot more heart disease deaths among young Americans AS THE PANDEMIC TOOK OFF, but also importantly BEFORE VACCINES. And in 2020 it plateaus AS WE START VACCINATING PEOPLE

The decline at the end may be due to data lags, but I already dropped the last 3 months of 2022
Jan 8, 2023 5 tweets 2 min read
Adjusted for inflation, median family income in the US for families with one earner is 70% greater than the mid-1950s

The inflation adjustment includes the cost of housing and education Source: www2.census.gov/programs-surve…
Aug 26, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
Here's a chart showing the distribution of benefits from student loan forgiveness. Just, kidding, it's the distribution of benefits from the mortgage interest deduction, which costs about $250 billion every 10 years (and will cost more if TCJA isn't extended after 2025) I point this out not to play "gotcha" or say people are hypocrites, but I've never even seen even 1% of the rage directed at student loan forgiveness these past few days directed at the MID. Is that merely because it's done by executive order rather than Congress?
Aug 26, 2022 4 tweets 1 min read
Folks, I gotta ask: is this adjusted for inflation?

(Link is gated) I know people will say, "but it's only 20 years ago"

Nominal median family income rose by 65% between 2002 and 2019, and is likely even higher now (it did dip slightly in 2020)
Aug 23, 2022 5 tweets 2 min read
At the time of the Revolution, the US had the broadest franchise in the world. Estimates are that 50-80% of white males could vote, compared with less than 20% in England. States began to quickly experiment with even broader franchises, such as women (NJ) and non-property holders While property holding qualifications for voting were common (following England and other early democracies), after the 13 original states, no new states had strict property-holding requirements, and many of the original states copied those frontier states
Apr 17, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
150 days per year comes from Juliet Schor's book, which is lifted from an assumption in a 1986 Gregory Clark working paper. But Clark no longer believes the 150 day estimate, and put it at 250-300 days per year for medieval peasants: https://t.co/6fSebrwdjq
And as many others have pointed out, it was not so great to be a medieval peasant. Average incomes, a measure of how many real goods and services you can purchase, were perhaps 1/30 of what they are today:

https://t.co/d1Si6lH6ldourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-pe…
Feb 23, 2022 5 tweets 2 min read
He just compared inflation adjusted income to nominal housing prices. It's the famous "bread tweet" all over again! If you don't know about the bread tweet, you gotta see it. This thing was super viral. Then read up thread for my debunking of it:
Dec 10, 2021 10 tweets 2 min read
The tax cuts in Arkansas are being described as "historic" since they are the largest in state history

And indeed that's true, but they are also historic in another sense: the personal income tax rate in 2025 of 4.9% would be the lowest in state history, just below original 5% However, the rate at which the tax applies is very different than in 1929. It's interesting that in *nominal* terms, the top rate in 1929, 1971, and 2025 (roughly, depending on inflation adjustments) applied to taxable incomes of $25,000

But $25K in 1929 was a very high income!
Dec 9, 2021 5 tweets 2 min read
Arkansas's income tax reform is now fully passed by the legislature

-Top individual rate drops to 4.9% in 2025 (from 5.9%)
-Corporate rate drops to 5.3% in 2025 (from 5.9%)
-Combine lower and middle brackets
-SD inflation indexed
-$60 low-income credit

apnews.com/article/busine… Rate changes partially dependent on revenue -- no withdrawals can be made from Catastrophic Reserve Fund, which must be 20% of general fund budget (also a new rule)

But individual rate will definitely drop to 5.5% (2022) and 5.3% (2023). Ditto corp rate at 5.7% (2023)
Dec 8, 2021 7 tweets 2 min read
Today the AR Senate passed two very different tax bills

The first, SB1, is the main bill of the special session. It will likely provide a tax cut for *every single Arkansan* that currently pays income taxes

The second, SB10, provides a tax cut for exactly *one* firm - US Steel SB10, the tax credit for US Steel, passed the Senate unanimously

Here's the DFA fiscal impact statement: arkleg.state.ar.us/Bills/FTPDocum…
Dec 7, 2021 4 tweets 2 min read
Arkansas Senate Tax and Revenue committee is now considering the main tax cut bill for the special session. If enacted, this would be the largest tax reduction in Arkansas' history

Here's the DFA impact statement on the bill: arkleg.state.ar.us/Bills/FTPDocum…

Image is @acre_uca estimates Image You can watch here: sg001-harmony.sliq.net/00284/Harmony/…
Nov 2, 2021 10 tweets 5 min read
The age gradient of COVID-19 deaths is well known. But in recent months, it has been changing

Consider these charts. For every age group under 50, Aug & Sept 2021 were by far the worst months of the pandemic (and data is still incomplete)

(Note: different y-scale for each) If deaths are getting worse, does this mean the vaccines aren't working? No! For the more highly vaccinated groups, those over 65, deaths have been much lower recently. Age group 50-64 has more deaths, but the increase isn't as big (see next Tweet)
Oct 28, 2021 6 tweets 3 min read
Gosh, it's a total mystery why Florida got so much COVID media coverage this summer! They must just hate the governor, no other possible explanation! Of course, these numbers could change. And guess what, if they do, and if other states start to have months as bad as Florida, they will get covered too!
Oct 27, 2021 4 tweets 2 min read
Remember when people were like "yeah, but they can't maintain it forever, eventually everyone will have roughly the same number of deaths" ImageImage And it's not just a matter of classifying deaths differently, in case you were wondering Image