What do you think the CSO should produce? A huge spreadsheet with the disposable income of all 1.7 million households in the country? We need a way to summarise data. The mean and the median are useful ways of doing that. Deciles are even better. We have all of these.Originally Posted by IrishTom
If you don't like the concept of averge per household why not have a look at the aggregates. CS provided a useful summary in an earlier post.
If I earn 20 thousand Euro a year and my neighbour earns 1 million does that mean that our average income is 600 thousand....what a load of rubbish...
Well, well, well, excuse my mere being! What about the wife???
If I earn 20 thousand Euro a year and my neighbour earns 1 million does that mean that our average income is 500 thousand....what a load of rubbish...
What "model"? The results are based on a survey of 11,587 people. The results are just the outcome of arithmetic. They are not modelled.
This sort of stuff is incredible!!!
More incredible stuff!
Try again, maybe it will be a case of third time lucky.
We just have to bring another half million people in here to buy them
Didn't you just prove some others' point? 60% of the households have less than the 43K disposable income. One otherwise wonders why the top 10% need almost 16K in "social transfers" as well. I would suggest that such number is simply obscene. Perhaps Eire's new motto can be: Leave the 80-89% group for the Top 10 and you'll net an additional 6+K in "social transfers". Lastly, and by the way, I trust that you understand that the one point made by Irish Tom is correct. Look at the Top 20%. Add them together. Then ask yourself how many other groups of 10 you need to add together to match that. So you get the point, start with the bottom 10 and add on. You should find that the Top 20 have more household income than the bottom 60%.
Edited to add: While you're adding groups of 10, compare the Top 10 with the bottom 50 (or bottom half). Should be 118,352 versus 114,658.
Last edited by yobosayo; 3rd December 2011 at 08:27 AM.
I'm not out to prove anyones' point. I am simply providing the numbers. Most of the arguments against are based on empty rhetoric, idle speculation, self flagellation or just pure nonsense.
The data by decile show that 680,000 household have a disposable income of more than €41,732. The reaction of some people is that if you don't say that every household in the country is boiling stones for soup you don't know what's happening.
As I said in the OP there has been plenty said about the obvious inequality alright and most of the discussion in the media tended to be on the deteriorating inequality seen in 2010. One thing to the careful of is comparing household deciles that does not make it appropriate to simply add deciles.
The top decile has the largest number of people at 3.78 per household. Of these an average of 2.1 are working while 0.76 are not economically active (many of whom are retired) while only 0.11 people per household are unemployed. They also have an average of 0.8 children under 16. Ten households in the top decile will on average have 37 people with 21 people working, 8 not economically active, 8 children under 16 and 1 unemployed person.
The fifth (middle) decile has 2.72 people per household. Ten households in the top decile will on average have 27 people with 8 people working, 11 people not economically active, 6 children under 16 and 2 unemployed people.
The top household decile collects more transfers because it includes more people and therefore collects more payment, particularly universal ones such as the pension and child benefit.
The overcome problems such as this the CSO provide "equivalised" income which is essentially income per individual. Using this the CSO report that the share of income in the top quintile in 2010 was 5.5 times the share of income in the bottom quintile. In 2009 the gap was 4.3. The income quintile share ratio of 5.5 was the highest since the survey was begun in 2004.
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