Housing Starts report the number of privately owned new houses (technical housing units) on which construction has been started in a given period. Housing permits are an advance measure that indicates when housing building permits are approved. Data is typically divided into three types: single-family houses, townhouses or small condos, and apartment buildings with five or more units. Each apartment unit is considered a single start, so, the construction of a 30-unit apartment building is counted as 30 Housing Starts. It is considered an important leading economic indicator where an increase in housing is often an early indicator that the country is pulling out from a recession. Housing incentives like low interest rates can cause overbuilt housing, which can lead to economic crises as occurred in the US in 1989 and 2008, and in China starting in 2020.
Income inequality is measured according to the share of wealth owned by the top 10%, based on data compiled by the World Inequality Lab managed by Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman. Finesse ranks countries based on this disparity, with the highest wealth inequality receiving the lowest rank, and the lowest wealth inequality receiving the highest rank. The World Inequality Lab obtains data from public data sources including tax records, national income accounts, and wealth surveys. Critics counter that this excludes the underground cash economy, which is inherently challenging due to its secretive nature. Piketty’s work is more focused on identifying long-term trends and he believes the underground economy would not fundamentally alter his conclusion that income and wealth inequality have been increasing. His solution is to enact an annual wealth tax starting at 1% of assets including net real estate equity (assessed property value less mortgage) and publicly traded stocks, bonds, and cash accounts.
