ANOTHER TAKE ON INCOME GROWTH

The NY Times article discussed in the previous post also provided a link to another research paper that attempted to account for total economic resources, including EITC, food stamps, health insurance and other non-payroll sources of broad income:

Title: A "second opinion" on the economic health of the American middle class

Author(s): Richard V. Burkhauser , Jeff Larrimore and Kosali I. Simon

Source: National Tax Journal. 65.1 (Mar. 2012): p7.

I used the U of A library to get access to this paper and found a pretty interesting comparison of business cycles that roughly corresponds to the Raygun, Clinton and 1st seven years of the criminal Bush regime.

Raygun period:

Panel A: 1979-1989 Business Cycle Mean Income Growth (%), by
Income Quintile

                    Household        Household
                      Size-        Size-Adjusted
                     Adjusted        Post-Tax
                     Post-tax      Post-Transfer
                      Post-          + Health
                     Transfer      Insurance (1)

Bottom quintile        0.4              0.4
2nd quintile           1.0              1.0
Middle quintile        11.7            11.7
4th quintile           15.6            15.6
Top quintile           28.1            28.1
Top 10 percent         27.4            33.7
Top 5 percent          32.0            39.5
1979 Gini             0.349            0.330
1989 Gini             0.394            0.372

Adding in health insurance only made a difference in the top 10 percent and overall, the bottom 40% experienced essentially no growth in these years.

Clinton period:

Panel B: 1989-2000 Business Cycle Mean Income Growth (%), by
Income Quintile

                    Household        Household
                      Size-        Size-Adjusted
                     Adjusted        Post-Tax
                     Post-tax      Post-Transfer
                      Post-          + Health
                     Transfer        Insurance

Bottom quintile        20.4            23.2
2nd quintile           15.2            18.2
Middle quintile        14.5            16.8
4th quintile           13.8            15.5
Top quintile           14.8            15.5
Top 10 percent         17.0            15.2
Top 5 percent          16.6            15.1
1989 Gini             0.394            0.372
2000 Gini             0.390            0.364

Every group except the top 10% gained from including health insurance and 
unlike the Raygun years ALL groups had a significant gain in income.

Bush period (2000 to 2007 only):

Panel C: 2000-2007 Business Cycle Mean Income Growth (%), by
Income Quintile

                    Household        Household
                      Size-        Size-Adjusted
                     Adjusted        Post-Tax
                     Post-tax      Post-Transfer
                      Post-          + Health
                     Transfer        Insurance

Bottom quintile        -4.8             2.2
2nd quintile           -1.2             4.7
Middle quintile        1.2              4.9
4th quintile           2.3              5.2
Top quintile           1.5              3.1
Top 10 percent         -2.0             1.3
Top 5 percent          -3.4             1.5
2000 Gini             0.390            0.364
2007 Gini             0.396            0.362

An obvious conclusion is that the infamous Bush tax cuts were pretty much a FAIL.