Hello! My name is Matt Spence, and I currently work at the US Census Bureau in the Governments Division producing data like those graphed above. Go ahead, try clicking on the buttons to show different data series. Also, try clicking on the individual states in the legend to toggle them on or off.
I am a Ph.D. candidate in political science at UCLA. My dissertation research is on distributive politics: specifically, on the incidence and patterns of political manipulation of local public goods in India. I am broadly interested in questions of political economy, especially distributive politics, the provision of public goods, federalism, patronage and corruption, the effects of trade and capital mobility, and globalization more generally. I attended UC Berkeley for my undergradute degree.
I blog here, and you can see my CV/resume here. You can read more about my research here. And you can contact me at matt@mattspence.com.
My wife and I currently live in the DC metro area, and we're doing our best to explore the area. Let me know if we should check somewhere out!