Brain Bites – Issue 4

Brain Bites are “now and then” updates regarding trends, statistics, and interesting info-bites in personal economics. These tasty tidbits help maintain your edge over an unpredictable future. Think of them as cerebral snacks for the hungry mind!

Boomers cash in

In 1935, when the U.S. established 65 as the minimum age for drawing Social Security benefits, the average life-expectancy was 65 for women and 62 for men. If the retirement age increased along with life expectancy, people today would retire at 75.
Ref: Center for Demography and Population Health

Her money’s worth

Ida May Fuller, the first Social Security beneficiary to receive a recurring monthly payment, retired in 1940 at age 65. She had contributed less than $25 total to Social Security. Ms. Fuller lived to be 100, during which time she collected nearly $24,000 from Social Security.
Ref: Social Security Administration

How do I love me?

People in their 20s are 300% more likely to display narcissistic tendencies than people aged 65+, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
Ref: Daily Telegraph (UK)

Gray hairs go social

Facebook is by far the most popular social networking site in the U.S. Used by 71% of Americans, FB accounted for 5 out of every 6 minutes spent on a site in 2012. Its strongest growth in 2013 came from users over the age of 65, who signed onto the site to keep in touch with their friends, children, and grandchildren.
Ref: Pew Center for Internet and American Life

Gilded age

Wages of the top 1% of U.S. wage earners rose 138% from 1979 to 2013, while those of the bottom 90% rose 15%. Within that top 1%, the upper-tenth (0.1%) experienced 290% growth since 1979 (after peaking at 362% in 2007). In 2012, the average income of someone in the top 1% was $1.3 million.
Ref: Economic Policy Institute

Send in your shirt

Meanwhile, government raises most of its taxes from the upper middle class and the wealthy. In 2011, the richest 1% of Americans paid 24% of all federal taxes. The richest 20%, including the top 1%, paid 69% of taxes.
Ref: Congressional Budget Office

Earning her keep

Based on an interview of more than 40,000 mothers, the time mothers spend performing 10 typical job functions equated to an annual salary of $115,432 in 2011 for a stay-at-home mom.
Ref: Salary.com

Changing families

The number of children raised in female-headed families is growing, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures. In 2012, 28.6% of children were born to a white mother out of wedlock. For Hispanics, it was 52.5%. For African-Americans, it was 72.3%.
Ref: Heritage Foundation

Sign of the times

Couples are more likely to postpone divorce in tough economic times because divorce is expensive. The divorce rate fell from 2008 to 2009, a 40-year low, amid the financial crisis. By 2012, the divorce rate had rebounded toward 2008 levels.
Ref: Population Research and Policy Review

Slave labor

Alums of unpaid internships had full-time offers at nearly the same rate as those who had no internships at all—about 37%—compared with 62% for those with paid internships. This suggests unpaid internships don’t help students land full-time jobs.
Ref: National Assn. for College Admissions Counseling

Movin’ on up

Americans are moving again and it’s middle-aged and older people who are increasingly mobile, not Gen NeXt. More than 7 million moved between states in 2012 (up from 6.7M in 2010). Job woes edged the transplant rate for those age 18 to 34 down to 20.8%.
Ref: U.S. Census Bureau

Gay(ning) fast

As of the end of 2014, the number of states where gay marriage is legal increased to 35. In that year, the first gay weddings in Britain also took place.
Ref: The Economist

Increasingly staid

The proportion of teens reporting binge drinking and use of tobacco has fallen. Waiting longer to have sex, the teen pregnancy rate is now half what it was 2 decades ago. The transfer of unskilled jobs overseas has put a new premium on education and students are recognizing that they have more at stake than previous generations.
Ref: National Institute on Drug Abuse and OECD

Sikorsky parents

A 2012 survey of more than 500 college graduates found that 8% of them had a parent accompany them to a job interview, and 3% had the parent sit in on the interview.
Ref: Adecco

Big brother is watching

Sixty-eight percent (68%) of Internet users believe the current laws are not good enough in protecting people’s privacy online.
Ref: Pew Research Center

Right to be forgotten

In May, 2014 the European Union’s highest court ruled that people can require Google and other Internet companies to delete links about them in search results. Within 24 hours of offering the service, 12,000 people signed an online form asking Google to remove links about them. By year end requests swelled to 150,000, about half of which were granted. In the U.S., a new California law gives children similar privacy rights.
Ref: The Guardian

Frayed nerves

Over the past 30 years, self-reported levels of stress have increased 18% for women and 25% for men. The yearly cost of stress to American businesses is as high as $300 billion.
Ref: World Health Organization 

The information in Brain Bites is sourced from a variety of usually reliable publications. Nevertheless, we cannot guarantee the accuracy or currency of this material and a degree of common sense should be applied before quoting it. If something appears to be too good to be true, it probably is.

Image credit: “Jelly Brain Dissection” by Guerilla Science (2010), licensed/modified (red ring removed) by permission of copyright holder.