President Joe Biden’s third year in office was dogged by political gridlock yet blessed by an economy that refused to break despite painful inflation and surging borrowing costs. If presidential elections hinge on “the economy, stupid,” then winning a second term should be a cakewalk for Biden given the robust labor market, strengthening household finances, and improving confidence among consumers and businesses. Instead, his poll numbers predict the opposite, weighed down by the legacy of Covid-era inflation and doubts about his age. Looming even larger is the influx of migrants at the southern border,which Republicans would rather use as a weapon than fix via bipartisan immigration reform. As Biden and his presumptive opponent, Donald Trump, take their message to voters ahead of the November election, Bloomberg Opinion columnists tell you how the president’s performance stacks up against his predecessor by the numbers.
Metrics
Immigration | Health | Jobs and wages | Inflation | Energy transition | Household wealth | Income inequality | Markets | Homicides | Job approval
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Millions signed up for health care
Taking the number of uninsured Americans to an all-time low
INTERACTIVE Notes: Data for 18–64 year olds at the time of interview; 2023 figures are through June. Source: National Health Interview Survey
Lisa Jarvis
Access to affordable health care is Biden’s crowning achievement. The number of uninsured Americans hit an all-time low of 7.2% in the second quarter of 2023, while the number of people who signed up for an Obamacare plan for 2024 surged to 21.3 million.
At the start of Biden’s term, about 12 million Americans had health insurance through Obamacare, or more formally, the Affordable Care Act — and that level hadn’t changed much since 2015, two years after the public marketplaces opened. When the ACA passed in 2010, 22.3% of working-age people were uninsured compared with just 10.4% now.
INTERACTIVES Health insurance status Notes: Data for 18–64 year olds at the time of interview. Source: National Health Interview Survey
There is a caveat. Some of the voracious appetite for marketplace plans in 2023 likely came from the millions of people who lost access to public insurance last year. The end of pandemic-era rules that allowed Americans to stay on Medicaid without renewing their paperwork pushed out some 16.4 million people, including more than 3.2 million kids, according to the health policy nonprofit KFF.
But policymakers positioned the ACA marketplaces to absorb some of these folks. Subsidies made it easier for people to afford marketplace plans, and the administration increased funding for people trained to help the public find the right insurance fit.
Many of the new enrollees live in Republican strongholds such as West Virginia and Louisiana, where sign-ups increased 80% and 76%, respectively. Texas and Florida each saw enrollment increases of roughly a million people as well.
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The cost of living is going down
The rapid disinflation under Biden is unmatched in modern history
Note: Breakeven data, measure of future inflation expected by Treasury investors, available starting 2004; as of March 4. Source: Bloomberg
Matthew A. Winkler
America’s cost of living, which surged to a four-decade high during Biden’s first two years, is poised to return to its pre-pandemic level this year — when family wealth across income groups is more robust than at any point in the new century.
INTERACTIVES - Consumer and expected inflation Note: As of March 4. Source: Bloomberg
Inflation was supposedly undermining “Bidenomics” when the consumer price index peaked at 9.1% in 2022, according to prevailing media narratives featuring many prominent economists. The CPI has since plummeted at an unprecedented rate to 3.1%. The resulting disinflation — occurring while gross domestic product expanded 3.2% last quarter — is unmatched in modern history and the opposite of the 1970s, when inflation took eight years and five months to subside to 3%.
Even as the Federal Reserve rapidly raised interest rates in 2022 and through mid-2023, some $30 trillion of US government securities — the daily reference of global investor preferences — showed that the inflation spike was little more than a consequence of supply chain disruptions and pandemic shortages.
In June 2022, many feared inflation was out of control. But the market for swaps, or derivatives, tied to inflation accurately anticipated CPI to the nearest decimal every month during the course of the year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It’s now signaling 3.1% inflation by July and 2.3% in November. The breakeven rate showing traders’ expectations for average inflation in the next two years at 2.8% is 60 basis points lower than a year ago.
The good news for Biden is that while prices remain elevated, voters are starting to realize — just like Wall Street — that big price increases are over.
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Families are richer than ever
Net worth has climbed under Biden, sentiment needs to catch up
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