Katarina Nolte

Standard Of Living In The United States vs. Europe

“The standard of living in the United States is one of the top 20 in the world by the standards economists use as measures of standards of living.
Per capita income is high but also less evenly distributed than in most other developed countries; as a result, the United States fares particularly well in measures of average material wellbeing that do not place weight on equality aspects.

Americans enjoy more radios per capita than any other nation and more televisions and personal computers per capita than any other large nation.

The median income is $43,318 per household ($26,000 per household member) with 42% of households having two income earners.
Meanwhile, the median income of the average American age 25+ was roughly $32,000 ($39,000 if only counting those employed full-time between the ages of 25 to 64) in 2005.
According to the CIA the gini index which measures income inequality (the higher the less equal the income distribution) was clocked at 45.0 in 2005, compared to 32.0 in the European Union and 28.3 in Germany.

Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households.

The United States has one of the widest rich-poor gaps of any high-income nation today, and that gap continues to grow.
In recent times, some prominent economists including Alan Greenspan have warned that the widening rich-poor gap in the U.S. population is a problem that could undermine and destabilize the country’s economy and standard of living stating that “The income gap between the rich and the rest of the US population has become so wide, and is growing so fast, that it might eventually threaten the stability of democratic capitalism itself”.”

“Article 2 of the first Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights obliges all signatory parties to guarantee the right to education.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Higher_Education_Area

“At the world level, the United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966, guarantees this right under its Article 13, which states that “higher education shall be made equally accessible to all, on the basis of capacity, by every appropriate means, and in particular by the progressive introduction of free education”.”

“The blogosphere has been buzzing with a debate on whether America or Europe is more prosperous.”

“LIVING standards in Britain are set to rise above those in America for the first time since the 19th century, according to a report by the respected Oxford Economics consultancy.

It says that GDP per head in Britain will be £23,500 this year, compared with £23,250 in America, reflecting not only the strength of the pound against the dollar but also the UK economy’s record run of growth and rising incomes going back to the early 1990s.

Now, not only have average incomes crept above those in America but they are more than 8% above France (£21,700) and Germany (£21,665).”

“The economic supremacy that the U.S. has enjoyed in the second half of this century owes much to the good fortune it enjoyed in the first half.
Two world wars destroyed Europe and Japan, while the prosperity that comes from running a wartime economy turned America into an economic superpower. America held this advantage for decades, but in the last 20 years, Europe and Japan have been rapidly catching up, and in many areas overtaking us. There is a mundane explanation for this: developing nations grow much faster than already developed nations, much like a child grows faster than a teenager.
But the fact that they are catching up and often by-passing us with societies that are more equal, democratic, liberal, pro-environmental and pro-labor presents a serious challenge to conservative thought.”

“… Europe’s slower economic growth… a statistical illusion: The U.S. is growing faster only because its population is rising faster, not because its living standards are improving any more quickly.”

Tagged: lifequalitystatisticshealthcareeducation