About a year ago the United Nations announced UNdata, a way to disseminate data stretched out across 22 United Nations databases through one central application. While UNdata houses 66 million records, it's tough to get a sense of what's going on without a visual representation. Progress is an effort to make this world data visible. Take a look.

It's only been in the last 50 years or so that the average male lived long enough to enjoy any time in retirement. For all of human history before the 1950s, the average male worked his entire life and died before reaching retirement age.

Education attainment is closely linked to income...

A new analysis by the Government Accountability Office estimates what kinds of programs the federal fiscal stimulus package will fund at the state and local level for the coming year.

A new study by the Government Accountability Office estimtes the pace at which stimulus funds will reach states and municipalities.

Economic data continue to be volatile...

What better way to mark the income taxes filing deadline than by providing another form for you to fill out to see how much you would have been taxed when income tax forms were first issued by the IRS in 1913! Our tool below is based upon the first page of the original 1040 form...

April is typically the time that calls for reforming our Byzantine tax code, as the Economist recently described it, increase. One measure of the complexity of the code is the increasing number of returns prepared by tax professionals. Above is IRS data cited by the National Taxpayers Union.

The Congressional Budget Office has just released an updated version of its study, Historical Effective Tax Rates, which charts the actual tax rate of households for all federal taxes, including the income tax, payroll tax, excise and corporate taxes. In the latest version of the study the CBO breaks down tax rates for the highest income quintile into three additional sub-categories, thereby producing a clearer picture... More

Wall Street firms and their clients fell in love with mortgage-backed securities starting in the late 1990s, and although their enthusiasm cooled briefly, it rekindled again in 2002 as low interest rates sparked new demand for mortgages. Data are from the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association...

According to BLS,  the U.S. economy has lost 5.76 million jobs since Dec. 2007. Further analysis shows that 79% of the job losses (4.551 million) were jobs held by males, compared to female jobs losses of 1,209,000, or 21% of the total (see top... More