Economix: The Two-Track Recovery (or ‘Depression’?)

Despite what the gross domestic product report released Thursday shows, nearly a third of Americans believe the country is in a depression, according to a new Gallup poll.

The poll, conducted April 20-23, found that 29 percent of Americans thought the economy was in a depression, and an additional 26 percent thought it was in a recession.

The recession technically ended nearly two years ago, according to the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Some of the disconnect between expert and popular views may be due to semantics. To economists, the words “recession” and “expansion” refer to a change in economic activity — that is, which direction is the economy moving in. But most laypeople who hear these terms probably think of the level of economic activity — that is, does the economy feel healthy or not.

But even if we take the poll responses to mean “is the economy healthy” (or some variant of that concept), the responses still warrant further digging.

It turns out the people most likely to say the economy is “growing,” and the least likely to say the economy is in a “depression,” are the wealthy. Poor Americans are twice as likely to think the economy is in a depression as the rich are:

This makes sense: Rich people have seen more improvements than the poor in the last few years, considering factors like the rise in the stock market (which primarily benefits wealthier Americans) and the surge in commodity prices (which disproportionately hurt the poor).

They say all politics is local; perhaps all economics is, too.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=6462238bd8251e1d9641d9c3e214639a