How you measure something determines what you find — and often determines what you can find. The gender wage gap looks different depending on whether you control for occupation. Segregation looks different depending on whether you measure it relatively or absolutely. Ideology looks different depending on whether you use roll calls or surveys. Posts here take the act of measurement seriously as a theoretical and political problem, not just a technical one.
The debate about gun control provides a great example of a collision between political issues and public policies. As I describe more below, most “political issues” are labels/shortcuts for describing preferences about multiple specific government policies/laws. The point of this post is that gun control, a political issue, is like a cookie. How I feel … Read more
I have been thinking a lot lately about this very interesting post by Kristina Lerman. The post is excellent: succinct and well-written, data-centric, and relevant beyond the data’s idiosyncratic qualities. In a nutshell, Lerman’s central question is whether the rate of information production is outstripping the rate at which we (choose to or can) consume and … Read more
I’ve been reading several papers lately that examine the effects of various government policies on various social and economic outcomes. Increasingly, I find myself wondering what these studies actually conclude with “null” results. (By the way, I am sure that this issue has been raised before, but I’ve been thinking a lot about it lately, … Read more
The Pew Research Center released a report today about economic segregation (complete pdf report) in the United States, authored by Paul Taylor and Richard Fry. It is an interesting and well done policy piece that summarizes its findings as follows. Residential segregation by income has increased during the past three decades across the United States and in 27 of … Read more
This weekend, the Olympics drew our attention to those who leave everyone behind, leading us to question the nature of time itself (and I started thinking about algebra). So, I naturally began to think about measurement and education… Recently, increased attention has been paid to the Obama Administration’s granting of waivers (or, “flexibility”) to states from the … Read more
A frequent talking point (e.g., like this) in this year’s presidential campaign is about the economic burden of federal regulations. Given this focus, I thought it might be helpful to wade into the arithmetic behind this burden and the ways in which any president might alleviate it in the coming years. I focus on the two … Read more