Flying Air Gini

The Gini coefficient is a way to measure the statistical distribution of income. The higher the index, the more unequal the society. The following is a good way to visualize the share of the economy.

Kieren Healy, a sociologist at Duke University, asked, would a passenger plane look like if seats really were distributed according to American income?

He took a standard Airbus A330-300 with a three-class configuration. It carries 227 passengers:  177 in economy, 42 in business and eight in first class. He calculates: “Economy get about 58% of the seating space on the plane. Business Class passengers get just over 31% of the room, and First Class passengers get about 11% of the space.” So how would a more representative American airline loo, using US census data?

In Air Gini’s three-class layout, some things look familiar and some things are a bit different. Economy Class makes up just under eighty percent of the passengers. Passengers seated there correspond to everyone who makes less than about $97,000 a year. Their share of total income in the US is just below fifty percent, and thus so is their share of the seating space. On the regular airline it was about fifty eight percent, so for these working stiffs the new arrangement is even more cramped than on our ordinary international flight. Economy Class passengers on Air Gini should expect less overhead bin space and more passive-aggressive interactions with the guy in front of them who insists on reclining his seat.

Up with the managers, meanwhile, things have become more compressed, too. Business Class travelers are just over eighteen percent of passengers, but now they get only fifteen percent of the space. That’s obviously still much better than Economy class, but it’s down from the thirty percent or so they had in the original plane. These fliers are almost all in the top quintile: in real-life terms, they correspond to everyone from just below the 80th percentile of the US income distribution up to just above the 96th percentile. Roughly, that’s households making between $97,000 and $280,000 a year. Yet many of them feel a little angry about how little space they have. Strange though it seems, some of those in the seats closest to the front of their section even feel somewhat poor—at least by comparison to those a bit further up the plane. Air Gini understands their situation and compensates them with a complimentary in-flight snack.What has happened to make Business Class more cramped? The answer is to be found in Ruling Class. Sorry, we mean, First Class.

On Air Gini, those eight most-valued passengers—three and a half percent of those on board—get thirty five percent of the available seating space. That’s a lot of legroom. So much, in fact, that as First Class passengers have spread out to take up the first third of the plane, Air Gini has been forced to replace the luxurious Business Class seats in the real-life configuration with still-comfortable but noticeably smaller chairs.

From here 

During the last several decades, income inequality in the United States has increased significantly — and the trend shows no sign of reversing. According to a recent report by the Council of Economic Advisers, if the share of income going to the bottom 90% was the same in 2013 as it was in 1973, median annual household income (adjusted for family size) would be 18%, or about $9,000, higher than it is now. Since 1980, average real hourly compensation has increased at half the rate of productivity growth.

Since the recession ended in 2009, real consumption spending by the top 5% has increased by 17%, compared to just 1% for the bottom 95%. The recovery’s pattern has reinforced longer-run trends. In 2012, the top 5% of earners accounted for 38% of personal-consumption expenditure, compared to 27% in 1995. During that period, the consumption share for the bottom 80% of earners dropped from 47% to 39%.

Children born into low- and high-income families are born with similar abilities. But they have very different educational opportunities, with children in low-income families less likely to have access to early childhood education, more likely to attend under-resourced schools that deliver inferior K-12 education, and less likely to attend or complete college. The resulting educational-attainment gap between children born into low and high-income families emerges at an early age and grows over time. By some estimates, the gap today is twice as large as it was two decades ago.

Rising income inequality breeds more inequality in educational opportunity, which generates greater inequality in educational attainment. That, in turn, translates into a waste of human talent, a less educated workforce, slower economic growth, and even greater income inequality.

The rich have both the incentives and the ability to promote policies that maintain or enhance their position. Given the U.S. Supreme Court’s evisceration of campaign-finance restrictions, it has become easier than ever for concentrated economic power to exercise concentrated political power. Though campaign contributions do not guarantee victory, they give the economic elite greater access to legislators, regulators, and other public officials, enabling them to shape the political debate in favor of their interests. As a result, the U.S. political system is increasingly dominated by money.