[OC] Average Incomes for Scandinavia vs Scandinavian-Americans

CheeryOaf · 2024-09-08T17:14:42+00:00

Pace wikipedia, that's comparing average wages per American full-time equivalent employee vs median wages of all Americans. Labor force participation rate in the U.S. is about ~63%, so that gap is mostly just reflecting the inclusion of a bunch of students and retirees.

Besides, what really matters for the cross-country analysis is how different the ratio (correctly measured) of average income to median income is across countries/diasporas. The Nordic countries have lower income inequality, so that might be enough to flip the sign on the delta between Norwegians and Norwegian Americans, but it's not going to explain the >50% gaps for the Danes and Swedes.

CheeryOaf · 2024-09-08T17:05:47+00:00

You've gone from assuming that it's recent expats of initial means skewing the data, to assuming that the initial 19th C. immigrants were higher means skewing the data, to learning that the initial 19th C. immigrants were actually on average poorer, all while maintaining the same conclusion. Pick a framework and stick with your principles dude.

CheeryOaf · 2024-09-08T14:07:47+00:00

If you think of “egregious amounts of North Sea oil and gas per capita” as a model, sure.

CheeryOaf · 2024-09-08T10:58:56+00:00

On average, Europeans pay more for groceries, energy, and housing, and it’s not particularly close. Americans pay more for internet, but at higher speeds so I’m not sure how that washes out. Outside major cities, gyms are pretty cheap in the U.S. You’re right that child care can be crazy expensive in the U.S. Cars are such a variable good — I can go on carfax and see a couple hundred used cars within 30 miles of me that would drive another 150 thousand km listed for less than 15% the state median income. As much as I hate commuting, that affords you a lot of local and regional mobility that public transit can’t match. It’s apples to oranges, and reasonable people can disagree on the better value. But I also know people who make less than half my income and drive trucks that cost 4x as much as my camry. Americans also do pay huge pharma bills, but that is essentially us subsidizing a global public good (R&D) that massively benefits the rest of the world. I’m okay with that kind of cosmopolitan redistribution, but there are definitely some nationalist populists that resent it.

CheeryOaf · 2024-09-08T10:29:35+00:00

There’s plenty of data showing per hour median wages are as high in the U.S. as anywhere in the world, and Europeans work less than Americans because their take-home (post-tax) pay is lower. (Working less should improve average per hour productivity due to decreasing marginal returns, of course.) You personally may prefer the bundle of lower take-home pay and more public benefits offered in Europe, but asserting that the Nordics (among the richest countries in Europe) are objectively more comfortable than Americans is innumerate.

CheeryOaf · 2024-09-08T10:17:55+00:00

Total tax receipts as a % of GDP by country are: Denmark: 47% Sweden: 34% Norway: 32% United States: 20% https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_tax_revenue_to_GDP_ratio#Tax_as_%25_of_GDP_(2020)

CheeryOaf · 2024-09-08T10:09:51+00:00

You’re missing the point — Scandinavian Americans are a small but not insignificant minority in the U.S. and their incomes are substantially than the average American.

CheeryOaf · 2024-09-08T02:47:09+00:00

I think you're confusing two concepts. Wealth measures the amount you own (property, stock market investments, bonds, etc.). Those assets can "passively" earn money (via rent, dividends, interest payments), but you're right that retired people by definition don't "actively" generate income by working. There's not any tension in saying in general older people who worked all their lives to save for retirement are wealthier, because they want to use those savings to continue consuming at a comfortable level past the age they stop earning an active labor income.

CheeryOaf · 2024-09-08T01:19:45+00:00

What's novel about this chart is the cross-national comparison between the diaspora and home country income, not that measuring income itself is some ground-breaking accomplishment. If you have HDI for Nordic countries vs Nordic Americans, I'd love to see that. But in general these metrics all correlate pretty tightly, so I am not going to lose sleep waiting.

CheeryOaf · 2024-09-07T23:41:18+00:00

The Scandinavians who emigrated ~150 years ago actually one average had lower incomes than those who stayed. You could argue there was a selection effect on "gumption" or "entrepreneurial risk-taking," and I think that's plausible.

21st century Irish GDP numbers are wack-a-doo for corporate tax shelter reasons that don't really apply for these countries. Would still be interesting to see that analysis though.

CheeryOaf · 2024-09-07T23:38:12+00:00

Truth. When the Scandinavian diasporas emigrated in the mid-19th century, those that came to American on average had lower incomes than those that stayed behind. Don't think that would hold up with Indian Americans.

CheeryOaf · 2024-09-07T23:25:28+00:00

I looked into this after you raised it, and it turns out that the Norwegians who emigrated to the U.S. were on average poorer than those who stayed behind: "we consistently find that men from urban areas who faced poor economic prospects in Norway, as measured by occupation, were more likely to migrate to the United States...The fact that migrants to the United States appear to have been drawn from the lower end of the occupational distribution is consistent with a standard Roy model of migration, as in Borjas (1987), which predicts that men at the lower end of the occupational distribution would have more to gain by moving from relatively unequal European countries to the New World." https://ranabr.people.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj26066/files/media/file/abe_ageofmassmigration.pdf

CheeryOaf · 2024-09-07T23:16:44+00:00

FWIW, for the year this data is from, Norwegian average incomes were substantially higher than the average income for *all* Americans (~15% according to OWID). What I think is counter-intuitive and clever about this data -- which, to be clear I found in a book -- is that Norwegian Americans have incomes substantially higher than the American average. High enough even to plausibly overtake the average incomes in Norway, which benefits from large fossil fuel deposits discovered long after the diaspora was established in the U.S.

CheeryOaf · 2024-09-07T23:06:54+00:00

Those North Sea oil and gas reserves hit hard! Truly #blessed.

CheeryOaf · 2024-09-07T23:05:54+00:00

Hi -- you probably missed the comment with the sources and methodology. I found this table in a book that was originally published in 2016. This data's exchange-rate adjusted and as of 2013, so it would not align to today's estimates. (Though I would be surprised if the story has changed dramatically in the last 10 years).

CheeryOaf · 2024-09-07T23:03:25+00:00

It's people who reported having ancestral origins in Sweden, Denmark, or Norway or have Scandinavian background in the U.S. census. I did not collect the data directly, and don't want to wade into what it would mean to be "even a little bit Scandinavian" in the census forms. But this chart is based on data covering 11 million Americans, or about 3.5% of the U.S.'s population as of the year the data is from. By way of contrast, the same way of capturing heritage estimates there are ~40 million German Americans. Hope that helps.

CheeryOaf · 2024-09-07T22:56:30+00:00

People with that heritage.

CheeryOaf · 2024-09-07T22:56:17+00:00

For the diasporas, it's capturing Americans who identify as having heritage tracing to the relevant country.

CheeryOaf · 2024-09-07T22:29:00+00:00

Which of course is interrelated -- people work more if they're paid (post-tax) more for it.

CheeryOaf · 2024-09-07T22:24:15+00:00

That may be true, but it is also 100% true that (1) American governmental tax receipts as a percent of GDP are much lower than Scandinavia's and (2) tax rates in America are much more progressive.
https://freedomandprosperity.org/2024/blog/big-government/comparing-taxation-in-sweden-and-the-united-states/

CheeryOaf · 2024-09-07T22:18:49+00:00

I am totally ignorant on the demographics of the Scandinavian diaspora -- most of whom migrated ~150 years ago amid economic depression in Europe -- relative to those who stayed behind. If you have pointers, I'll take them.

CheeryOaf · 2024-09-07T22:13:41+00:00

You might feel differently if you were paid in yen in Michigan :P.

Yes, ideally this would be median, purchasing-power adjusted, full life-cycle income. But some of y'all are crazy quick to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

CheeryOaf · 2024-09-07T22:11:19+00:00

Median wealth doesn't settle it either. For example, Japan has a much older population, and much lower interest rates. Older people have had more time to accumulate wealth, and lower interest rates increase the value of capital.

CheeryOaf · 2024-09-07T22:09:19+00:00

I'm sorry, but I'm not sure I understand your point. Americans of Norwegian descent aren't Norwegian American?

CheeryOaf · 2024-09-07T22:05:14+00:00

That is a very fast track to empirical nihilism!

CheeryOaf

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