Brain Bites – Issue 6

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!

Worth every penny

10,000 Baby Boomers reach age 65 every day. What’s the approximate net worth in the country controlled by Baby Boomers? 80%.
Ref: Center for Retirement Research

Who’s looking out for you?

In 1979, 38% of U.S. private-sector employees were covered by defined-benefit (pension) plans. By 2011, the number had fallen to 14%. Meantime, the percentage of defined-contribution plans, such as 401(k), more than doubled to 42%.  More employees are now responsible for saving for their future.
Ref: American Institute for Economic Research

Self-driving cars

Twenty-six percent (26%) of all motor vehicle crashes in 2014 are estimated to have involved cell phone use. Five seconds is the average time your eyes are off the road while texting; when traveling at 55 mph, that’s like driving the length of a football field blinded.
Ref: USAA

We don’t

As of 2015, a plurality of never-married Americans age 25 to 34 say the main reason they haven’t tied the knot is that they aren’t yet “financially prepared” to do so.
Ref: Urban Institute

Ahead of the curve

On June 25, 2015 the Supreme Court declared same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states. At the time of the ruling, 66% of Fortune 500 companies offered same-sex partner benefits and 89% explicitly prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
Ref: Fortune

Coming up short

Nearly three-quarters of Americans currently age 45 to 64 have less than $27,000 in their retirement accounts and one-third don’t have any sort of retirement account at all.
Ref: U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown

Steady as she goes

More workers are leaving the workforce to retire and the number of working women has plateaued. Unless immigration increases dramatically, the U.S. workforce is projected to expand only one-quarter as fast as it did in recent decades.
Ref: Congressional Budget Office (CBO)

Home sweet home

21.6M young persons age 18-31, some 36% of the total, still languish in the parental home. While some may live at home only during the holidays, the share of young persons stuck with mom and pop is the largest since surveys began in 1968.
Ref: The Economist

Nuclear debt bomb

The federal government public debt is $18 trillion, or eighteen thousand billion dollars and rising at a rate of $40 to $50 billion per month. In addition to this publicly acknowledged debt, Medicare and Social Security represent most of the government’s unfunded obligations, approaching $48 trillion and $25 trillion respectively.
Ref: Cato Institute

On the road again

In 2012, about 76% of workers age 16 and older drove to work alone. Carpooling has tanked, falling from about 20% in 1980 to under 10% in 2012.
Ref: U.S. Census Bureau

Making the grade

GPAs have been on the rise. A 2012 study looking at the grades of 1.5 million students from 200 four-year U.S. colleges and universities found that the percentage of A’s given by teachers nearly tripled between 1940 and 2008.
Ref: Council for Aid to Education

The working class

Almost two-thirds of the class of 2013 participated in an internship or co-op. Nearly 50% of those internships were unpaid.
Ref: National Assn. of Colleges and Employers

Tuna vs. mackerel

In 2014, the CEOs of Standard & Poor’s 500 index companies earned, on average, 373 times the average U.S. worker’s salary of $36,134. But these are big tuna. That same year, there were 246,240 non-self-employed CEOs, with an estimated mean annual salary of $180,700. Comparing the more modest mackerel, the pay ratio shrinks to just over 5 to 1.
Ref: AFL-CIO Paywatch/Bureau of Labor Statistics

Are storks an endangered species?

Millennial women are reproducing at the slowest pace of any generation in history. Birthrates among women in their 20s declined more than 15% between 2007 and 2012, most likely due to the Great Recession. It’s too soon, say experts, to know if production will ramp up with the improving economy.
Ref: Urban Institute

Welcome to the machine

Futurist Ray Kurzweil, Google’s director of engineering, predicts that the “singularity” will arrive in 2045. This is the point when humans and computers will merge as one, enhancing human intelligence a billion-fold thanks to powerful brain extensions.
Ref: Google

Feed me

The cost of our labyrinthine tax code is estimated at $1 trillion a year, or about 6% of the entire U.S. economy. In 2011, the IRS estimated that Americans slaved away 6 billion hours on tax-code compliance. That equates to a workforce of 3.4 million people, enough to form the nation’s third largest city.
Ref: Mercatus Center

Millennials rule

2015 is the year the Millennial generation—ages 18 to 34—will surpass the Baby Boom generation in size. One big difference: some 50% of Millennials say having a “job you enjoy” is “extremely important” to them, compared to just 38% of Boomers.
Ref: Fortune

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.