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Mark Levitan, Who Measured the True Face of Poverty, Dies at 73

He came up with a more realistic threshold, changing the way New York City determines who is impoverished and persuading the Obama White House to follow suit.Mark Levitan, who was instrumental in providing New York City officials with a more realistic measure of poverty, and in persuading the federal government to follow suit, died on Thursday at a hospital in Manhattan. He was 73.His son, Dan, said the cause was complications of leukemia. Dr. Levitan lived in Brooklyn.The results of Dr. Levitan’s alternative method of measurement were nothing to boast about: In 2006, the first year that the new formula was applied, the overall poverty rate in the city leapt by more than four percentage points compared with the official benchmark, and among older people it soared to a stunning 32 percent from 18.1 percent.But by calculating the added benefits of tax credits, food stamps and housing subsidies to poor people while also taking into account the local costs of rent, transportation, health care and child care, economists, using Dr. Levitan’s methodology, could also calibrate which anti-poverty programs were doing the most good for which group.In 2011, for example, Dr. Levitan found that food stamps and other benefits helped keep

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Existing-Home Sales Declined in April, With a Tight Supply and Record Prices.

Soaring prices and a shortage of available homes are starting to hold back the blazing U.S. housing market.Sales of existing homes fell 2.7 percent in April, the National Association of Realtors said Friday. It was the third straight monthly decline after a surge in transactions earlier in the pandemic.Mortgage rates have crept up since the start of the year, which has likely put a crimp in demand. But the main force holding back sales isn’t a lack of willing buyers. It is a lack of homes for them to buy — especially at prices they can afford.The median sales price of an existing home was $341,600 in April, up 19.1 percent from a year earlier. Both the price and the increase were record highs. The number of homes on the market rose in April but was down 20.5 percent from a year ago and remained close to a record low.As a result, competition for homes can be intense. The Realtors said that 88 percent of homes sold in April were on the market for less than a month. A quarter of buyers paid cash. At Redfin, the online brokerage, half of all homes sold in recent weeks have gone for

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U.S. backs a 15 percent global minimum tax on big companies as it tries to enlist other countries.

The Biden administration proposed a global tax on multinational corporations of at least 15 percent in the latest round of international tax negotiations, Treasury Department officials said on Thursday, a lower-than-expected offer as the U.S. looks to reach a deal with countries that fear hiking their rates will deter investment.

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Is It Time to Panic About Inflation? Ask These 5 Questions First.

Focus on exactly how and why prices are changing over time, and how these shifts might affect you.A price list at a bakery in 2017. Some price increases are more worrisome than others.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesTo understand why inflation is so worrying to so many people, you could look at price charts for lumber or used cars or New York strip steaks. There is no doubt that the prices of many of the things people buy are rising at an uncomfortably rapid rate.But to really understand why there is a persistent longer-term buzz of inflation concern, you have to wrestle with the ways in which money itself is fundamentally ephemeral.Ultimately, most money is a mere electronic entry in the ledger of a bank. It is worth only what it will buy, and what it will buy changes all the time. Or as the humor publication The Onion once wrote, money is “just a symbolic, mutually shared illusion.”When prices move abruptly — as when an economy that has been partly shut down for more than a year tries to reboot — that inherent uncertainty becomes all too real. When wild swings like

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Fed Minutes April 2021: Officials Hint They Might Soon Talk About Slowing Bond-Buying

Federal Reserve officials were optimistic about the economy at their April policy meeting, and they began to tiptoe toward a conversation about dialing back support for the economy, as government support and business reopenings fueled consumer spending and paved the way for a rebound.Fed policymakers have said they need to see “substantial” further progress toward their goals of inflation that averages 2 percent over time and full employment before slowing down $120 billion in monthly bond purchases. The buying is meant to keep borrowing cheap and bolster demand, hastening the recovery from the pandemic recession.Officials said “it would likely be some time” before their desired standard was met, minutes from the central bank’s April 27-28 meeting released Wednesday showed. But they noted that a “number” of officials said that “if the economy continued to make rapid progress toward the committee’s goals, it might be appropriate at some point in upcoming meetings to begin discussing a plan for adjusting the pace of asset purchases.”Confusing, and at times conflicting, data released since the April 27-28 gathering could make the Fed’s assessment of when to dial back support — or even to start talking about doing so in earnest — difficult. A report

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A Fed vice chair says trying to choke off inflation could ‘constrain’ the recovery.

Randal K. Quarles, the Federal Reserve’s vice chair for supervision and regulation, said that the central bank was monitoring inflation but that for now it expected the pickup underway to be temporary — and that reacting too soon would come at a cost.“For me, it’s a question of risk management,” Mr. Quarles said during testimony before the House Financial Services Committee. “History would tell us that the economy is unlikely to undergo these inflationary pressures for a long period of time.”Mr. Quarles pointed out that after the global financial crisis, the central bank lifted interest rates to guard against inflationary pressures. The expected pickup never came, and in hindsight the moves were “premature,” he said. He suggested that the central bank should avoid repeating that mistake.“We’re coming out of an unprecedented event,” Mr. Quarles said, noting that officials have the tools to tamp down inflation if it does surprise central bankers by remaining elevated. The Fed could dial back bond purchases or lift interest rates to slow growth and weigh down prices.He said that the key is for the central bank to be prepared, but that if it tried to stay ahead of inflation now it could end up “significantly

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Texas, Indiana and Oklahoma join states cutting off pandemic unemployment benefits.

Texas, Indiana and Oklahoma this week joined the growing number of states that are withdrawing from federal pandemic-related unemployment benefits.Supported by Republican governors and lawmakers as well as national and state chambers of commerce, the decision will eliminate the temporary $300-a-week supplement that unemployment recipients have been getting and will end benefits for freelancers, part-timers and those who have been unemployed for more than six months.In Wisconsin, where the governor is a Democrat, Republicans in the Assembly and Senate have introduced legislation to end participation.Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming also plan to end federal unemployment benefits, beginning in June or early July.“The Texas economy is booming and employers are hiring in communities throughout the state,” Gov. Greg Abbott said in a news release. “According to the Texas Workforce Commission, the number of job openings in Texas is almost identical to the number of Texans who are receiving unemployment benefits.”The moves will affect more than 3.4 million people in the 21 states, according to a calculation by Oxford Economics, a forecasting and analysis firm. Of those workers, 2.5 million currently on unemployment would

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Retail Sales Were Flat in April

Retail sales held steady in April after rising 10.7 percent the previous month, as Americans continued to spend government stimulus payments.Retail sales were flat last month after a buoyant March, the Commerce Department said on Friday, as Americans continued spending their latest round of government stimulus checks.April’s number was a slowdown from the prior month, when retail sales rose by 10.7 percent, as vaccinations increased and people became more comfortable outside of their homes, spending more money on clothing, restaurants, bars and sporting goods. Retail sales, which experienced record drops just over a year ago at the onset of the pandemic, have been closely watched as monthly gauges of the health of the economy and the mind-set of consumers. .dw-chart-subhed { line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 6px; font-family: nyt-franklin; color: #121212; font-size: 15px; font-weight: 700; } Monthly retail sales Seasonally adjusted advance monthly sales for retail and food services.Source: Commerce DepartmentBy The New York TimesEconomists at Morgan Stanley had anticipated a smaller increase in retail sales in April compared with March based on stimulus check distribution, with roughly 83 percent of this latest round distributed in the back

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As Economy Wobbles, Biden Stays Focused on Longer Term

The president’s advisers are pushing their most detailed argument yet for the long-term benefits of a $4 trillion agenda to remake the American economy and improve lives.WASHINGTON — President Biden and his economic team are pushing their most detailed case yet for trillions of dollars in new federal spending to rebuild public investment in workers, research and physical infrastructure, focusing on long-term ingredients of economic growth and equality even as the current recovery from recession shows signs of distress.In a new document from the White House Council of Economic Advisers, obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Biden’s team casts his $4 trillion economic agenda as a way to correct decades of tax-cutting policies that have failed to boost the middle class. Instead, the administration is pushing a rebuilding of public investment, like infrastructure, research and education, as the best way to fuel economic growth and improve families’ lives.The document provides a deeper economic backbone for arguments that Mr. Biden has made publicly and privately to sell his plans to lawmakers, including his expected comments to a group of Republican senators he has invited to the White House on Thursday to negotiate over an infrastructure package.It also reflects the administration’s

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Unemployment claims report will shed new light on the economy.

The latest update on the labor market is scheduled to arrive Thursday morning when the government releases its weekly report on jobless claims.Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg expect that the number of new claims filed will fall slightly from the previous week.Last week, the Labor Department reported that 505,000 workers filed first-time claims for state benefits in the week that ended May 1. An additional 101,000 new claims were filed for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, a federal program covering freelancers, part-timers and others who do not routinely qualify for state benefits. Neither figure is seasonally adjusted.The labor market is struggling to return to normal after more than a year of being whipsawed by the pandemic. Restrictions are lifting, businesses are reopening and job listings are on the upswing. Hiring increased in April but at a slower pace than anticipated.Whatever Thursday’s report brings, it is sure to fuel the debate over the impact that jobless benefits are playing in the economy’s recovery.Some employers, particularly in the restaurant and hospitality sectors, have complained of having trouble finding workers. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and several Republican governors have asserted that a temporary $300-a-week federal unemployment supplement has made workers reluctant to return to the

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