Gray Matter
By MARK R. RANK and THOMAS A. HIRSCHL
TWO economic issues loom especially large in the United States today: widespread economic insecurity and soaring levels of income inequality. These are not just issues of interest to academics and policy makers; they are a prime concern of ordinary citizens. “How much economic risk do I face in the future?” you may wonder. “How does my risk differ from that of others?”
Plenty of professors, including ourselves, analyze economic risk and publish the results in academic journals and other scholarly outlets. But Americans in general might also benefit from a tool that could help them personalize the vast amount of data that we have analyzed on this issue. So we constructed an economic risk calculator, now available at riskcalculator.org, that allows you to assess your chances of experiencing poverty in the next five, 10 or 15 years./.../