US (1960-2100) If Things are so Great, Why is Hardship in the US Increasing?

 

In a prior post (here, graphic above), I showed that measurable Hardship in the US is increasing. If US economic performance is so great, why is this happening.

Part of the reason is that the current US Administration (Trump II) is cutting benefits for SNAP (Food Stamps) and other US Welfare programs. Why "millions of Americans" have to be on food assistance in the first place is a question that bothers me and the answer has to do with World-System forces.

In this post, I will dig more deeply into models that describe the US Economy to see why the models are predicting increase in Hardship.

Notes

Hardship Index

The following indicators (from Shefner,  Roland and Pasdirtz, 2015) were used to construct the HARD (Hardship) Index. All data were taken from the World Development Indicators (WDI).

In addition to HARD1, two other indexes were constructed, HARD2 (dominated by Unemployment) and HARD3 (dominated by Inflation). Each index explained another 10% (0.841% and  0.933%, respectively) in the indicators. So, indeed, Unemployment and Inflation were important components of US Hardship, but the other indicators also played a role. Whether the US Electorate made a good choice in electing the TRUMP II administration to resolve their issues with hardship will have to wait and be seen over the next four years.

The Measurement Models for the WL20 Index and the US_HARD index are presented above.