Statistical Analysis Is Recession Raises

¶ … statistical analysis is "Recession Raises Poverty Rate to a 15-Year High" by Erik Eckholm. This article appeared in the New York Times on September 16, 2010. The author provided an exposition of the statistics for poverty provided by the Census Bureau for the year 2009. In his assessment, the author identified key socioeconomic variables that have changed. In the main, the use of the statistical data by the author conformed closely to the appropriate use of descriptive statistics articulated in the course.

The data presented in the article were coopted from the "Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2009." The report contains data on "income, poverty, and health insurance coverage for the United States. The data were collected as part of the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplements (CPS ASEC).The U.S. Census Bureau conducted the study. The data were collected from fifty states and 100,000 addresses were sampled. The majority of the data were collected in March 2010. The report presented descriptive statistics in the form of text, tables, and charts. The comparative elements of the report were tested statistically, and are significant at the 90% confidence level.

The author made use of descriptive statistics in the form of percentages, and measures of central tendency such as the median. Proportions were also presented in a comparative fashion. Percentages along with actual counts were used to demonstrate that more Americans are living below the poverty line. An example of this usage occurred where the author stated that 14.3% of the American population were living below the poverty line, this percentage represented millions of individuals. Median values were presented for income. The author stated that median income values have not risen between 2008 and 2009. The failure of median income values to rise suggested that the middle class was now stagnating.

The statistics used in this article were employed to support the thesis that poverty is increasing to unprecedented levels for all ethnicities across America. Present levels of poverty were compared to historical highs and shown to be higher by virtue of the percentage of persons who are living below the poverty line at this time. The author did not apprise the reader of the measure of poverty, so it is assumed that the way poverty is measured is the same over the decades. This may not be true so in this instance the comparison can be misleading.

The use of the median as a measure of income level is a consistent use of a statistical measure. The median is a more robust measure of national income than the mean since it is not as susceptible to the influence of outliers in the data (Gravetter & Wallnau, 2008). The use of the median provides a more precise measure of the middle class challenge. The conclusion that the middle class is stagnating is a legitimate conclusion based on the lack of income growth within that group. In this instance, the statistics were used appropriately.