Christian T. Elbaek
@celbaek.bsky.social
570 followers 1.3K following 8 posts
Assistant Professor at Aarhus University | investigating how scarcity and economic inequality influences financial and moral judgment & decision-making Website: https://www.au.dk/en/[email protected]
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Reposted by Christian T. Elbaek
resfoundation.bsky.social
🚨 New research published today

'Before the fall' looks at what has happened to the distribution of household wealth in Britain and the impact on families.

Read it here 👉 buff.ly/Ya8kInK
Senior Economist Molly Broome: 
"Wealth gaps in Britain are now so large that a typical full-time employee saving all their earnings across their entire working life would still not be able to reach the top of the wealth ladder. These gaps are doubly concerning as wealth mobility in Britain is low – people that start life wealthy tend to stay wealthy, and vice versa.
Rising house prices and changes in the value of pension promises account for most of the growth in wealth gaps since the early 2010s, rather than any active behaviour on the part of individuals, such as buying homes or acquiring new assets.
Soaring wealth and an acute need for more revenue has prompted fresh talk of wealth taxes ahead of the Budget next month. But with property and pensions now representing 80 per cent of the growing bulk of household wealth, we need to be honest that higher wealth taxes are likely to fall on pensioners, Southern homeowners or their families, rather than just being paid by the super-rich."
Reposted by Christian T. Elbaek
birthelarsen.bsky.social
Økonom og lektor ved CBS Birthe Larsen:
»Vi ved, at det påvirker børn negativt hele livet at vokse op i fattigdom, og at de har svært ved at kravle op igennem indkomstlagene. Den her undersøgelse giver et bud på, hvorfor det er så svært«, siger hun.

Læs denne artikel!:
politiken.dk/del/gUv3kYAE...
Fattige børn får dårligere mad, får sjældnere børstet tænder og får mindre opbakning fra læreren
Danmark | Sektionen med Politikens undersøgende journalistik og seneste nyt indenfor politik, ret, sundhed, uddannelse, forbrug, økonomi og aktuelle temaer
politiken.dk
Reposted by Christian T. Elbaek
lseinequalities.bsky.social
“What has happened is not that capital income trickled down, but that labour income ‘trickled up’” – @brankomilan.bsky.social on how income from capital remains a privilege of the few in our latest blog post #LSEInequalitiesBlog

Read the post here: buff.ly/BEs46q0
New Capitalism in America, Part III - LSE Inequalities
Why is capital so concentrated and why do so few have it? Under the "new" capitalism, why do 85% of the world’s population remain capital-income destitute?
blogs.lse.ac.uk
Reposted by Christian T. Elbaek
ourworldindata.org
The latest World Bank data counts 125 million more people as living in extreme poverty — but the world has not gotten poorer.
A line graph titled "A comparison of World Bank estimates of extreme poverty" illustrates the global number of people living in extreme poverty. 

Two distinct lines are present: one in dark brown representing the previous estimates using a poverty line of $2.15 per day measured in 2017 prices, and another in blue for the latest estimates utilizing a new poverty line of $3 per day measured in 2021 prices. The brown line trends downward, starting around 2 billion in 1990 and reaching 692 million in 2024. The blue line, starting slightly higher at roughly 2.3 billion, shows a similar decline, reaching 817 million in 2024. The difference between the lines — 125 million — indicates the increase in the estimated number of people living in extreme poverty due to the new measurement criteria. 

The note at the bottom indicates that data has been adjusted for inflation and differences in living costs using international dollars from 2017 and 2021. The data source is the World Bank (2025)
Reposted by Christian T. Elbaek
lseinequalities.bsky.social
Episode five of Antisocial Economics is out now!

@wealtherty.bsky.social talks to Professor Adrian Sinfield about the hidden world of tax expenditures, and why we know so little about a huge government expenditure that benefits higher income earners the most.
Antisocial Economics
What is wealth? How come so many of us haven’t got any? How does wealth inequality make poverty worse? In the UK and other rich economies, wealth inequality and poverty are at incredibly high…
buff.ly
Reposted by Christian T. Elbaek
jpube.bsky.social
Just published in @jpube.bsky.social:

"Old money: Campaign finance and gerontocracy in the United States"

By @adambonica.bsky.social & @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

#econsky #publiceconomics
celbaek.bsky.social
On my way to #ISPP2025 in Prague!

Very excited for our symposium on Saturday at 3:10PM arranged by @fransolmar.bsky.social:

“Unpacking support for redistribution: Psychological mechanisms and interventions”

Feel free to reach out if you want to meet up for a coffee and chat!
Reposted by Christian T. Elbaek
birthelarsen.bsky.social
I dag træder et nyt kontanthjælpssystem i kraft.

Forskning viser at Kontanthjælpsreformen i 2002 med nettofald i indkomst for de fattigste på 30% (starthjælp) betød mere fattigdom, børn der trivedes dårligere, fik dårligere karakterer, kortere uddannelse, mindre i job, lavere indkomst som voksne.
Reposted by Christian T. Elbaek
justinwolfers.bsky.social
You’ve seen this movie before: Maybe Reagan guessed, Bush hoped, and Trump tried—but tax cuts never paid for themselves. Given the mountain of evidence, claiming once again that "tax cuts will pay for themselves" is no longer ideologically motivated optimism.

It's a lie.
Reposted by Christian T. Elbaek
donmoyn.bsky.social
Trickle up economics
ddayen.bsky.social
The Joint Committee on Taxation is up late and busts out this striking distributional analysis of the Senate bill on taxes:
chart shows that under the bill, people making under $30,000 pay more in taxes, and millionaires pay substantially less.
Reposted by Christian T. Elbaek
adambonica.bsky.social
If you took the $1.1 trillion earned by just 100 billionaires last year and mailed every household a check, it'd be $8,700 each.

The thing is most billionaires don't actually pay taxes anymore. What the GOP bill is really doing is selling off public lands and cutting Medicare to pay off oligarchs.
A bar chart titled “The Cost of Billionaires Visualized” compares major U.S. expenses to the 2024 year-over-year wealth gains of just 100 billionaires. Bars represent spending or gains in billions of dollars and are labeled with household-level (HH) equivalents. Categories shown include:
	•	Ending homelessness: $20B ($159 per household)
	•	Federal employees: $210B ($1,670/HH)
	•	Teacher salaries: $214B ($1,702/HH)
	•	Gasoline: $307B ($2,449/HH)
	•	Groceries: $664B ($5,278/HH)
	•	Defense budget: $824B ($6,553/HH)
	•	100 billionaires: $1,094B ($8,700/HH)

A red banner at the bottom reads: “If we can’t afford groceries, we definitely can’t afford billionaires.”
Sources listed include HUD, NEA, BLS, USDA, OPM, and Bloomberg (Dec. 31, 2024).
Reposted by Christian T. Elbaek
jburnmurdoch.ft.com
Okay this is getting ridiculous.

In addition to the ongoing problems with the UK’s Labour Force Survey, the Wealth and Assets Survey (key source for measuring wealth inequality) has now also had its accreditation revoked due to falling response rates.

osr.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/news/osr-sus...
Reposted by Christian T. Elbaek
urisohn.bsky.social
Fellow European researchers, if at all in your power, try to get your school to consider late applicants who were admitted to US programs.

Hearing from many cases of admitted to top US schools who last minute realize they won't be allowed in the country.
Reposted by Christian T. Elbaek
birthelarsen.bsky.social
“I Netflix-serien ‘Reservatet’ ses ekstrem rigdom - næsten eksotisk for Danmark. Men eksistensen af en superrig dansk elite er mere virkelig end nogensinde.”

25 reformer har medvirket til øget ulighed: Socialdemokratiet stemt for 12, DF/Konservative for 21, Venstre for 23
www.mm.dk/velfaerd/art...
Reposted by Christian T. Elbaek
johnholbein1.bsky.social
What do tax cuts for the rich do?

They increase inequality.

They have no effect on economic growth or unemployment.

"Our results provide strong evidence against the influential political–economic idea that tax cuts for the rich ‘trickle down’ to boost the wider economy."
Reposted by Christian T. Elbaek
carlbergstrom.com
1. After getting some further insight into changes at NSF (thanks to those who reached out), I deleted a previous post where I tried to make sense of Cheatham's memo as reported in the Science story below.
NSF slashes number of ‘rotators’ and well-paid managers as part of restructuring
Smaller future budgets will require fewer people, NSF official tells staff
www.science.org
Reposted by Christian T. Elbaek
kristinabsimonsen.bsky.social
‼️If you haven't seen the call already, this is your reminder‼️

3-year postdoc in computational social science at Aarhus University to study societal norms about political power 🫅

I'll be @comptext.bsky.social in Vienna (April 24-26) if you want to meet up and hear more about the position ☕🗣️
kristinabsimonsen.bsky.social
💥Postdoc call 💥

Join my @erc.europa.eu project #YOPOW at Aarhus University

🎇 3-y position (possibility of 1-y extension)

❓How societal norms give rise to biased beliefs about political power in youth

🤖 Computational social science (large-scale text & image data)

Deadline May 15: bit.ly/4hIpSeD
celbaek.bsky.social
My brilliant postdoc, @fransolmar.bsky.social, recently published experimental evidence suggesting that perceived inequities in health and education can drive support to reduce economic inequality. Really cool work!
fransolmar.bsky.social
📢 NEW PUBLICATION! 📢
2nd paper of the thesis, in EJSP (2025). We ran 4 studies to test whether perceptions of economic-based disparities in health and education—beyond income—could enhance support for redistribution and collective action to reduce economic inequality doi.org/10.1002/ejsp...
Reposted by Christian T. Elbaek
chrisbail.bsky.social
Want to learn about computational social science *for free* and launch interdisciplinary research projects? We are so excited to announce there will be *26* Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science this year! Apply to one of them here: sicss.io/locations
Reposted by Christian T. Elbaek
drcatmac.bsky.social
Every scientist, long before they were a scientist, was a little kid who stood in front of a fish tank or stared up at the stars or turned over a rock to look at the bugs underneath and said “wow”. On the best days, working in science still feels like that.
Reposted by Christian T. Elbaek
johnlist.bsky.social
Our new study was just published in Nature! In Michigan, we find a large and persistent racial excellence gap over time. Socio-economic status explains one-third of the racial disparity in top academic achievement while school factors only explain about 1/10th. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Measuring racial educational disparities over time amongst top achievers - Nature
Data from Michigan, USA, systematically document that comparatively fewer students from racial minorities excel in maths and reading, and that this gap grows as students progress through school.
www.nature.com
Reposted by Christian T. Elbaek
m-b-petersen.bsky.social
Instruktøren for kryolit-dokumentaren tager til genmæle i P1 Orientering - men svarene er langt fra overbevisende: www.dr.dk/lyd/p1/p1-or...

For mig at se er dokumentaren et eksempel på misinformation, som det oftest praksiseres i politik og på sociale medier.

🧵 (1/4)
P1 Orientering | Tirsdag 11. feb. 2025 | DR LYD
Er DR-dokumentaren om kryolit i Grønland egentlig retvisende? Er Elon Musks drøm om at købe OpenAI realistisk? Og går EU-regulering af AI for langt? Dagens værter: August Stenbroen og Pernille Rudbæ...
www.dr.dk