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Am I the only one a little frustrated by the groupings here? I'd prefer that it was in raw percentiles rather than something like average of percentiles. Seems
by fisherjeff 10y ago
Am I the only one a little frustrated by the groupings here? I'd prefer that it was in raw percentiles rather than something like average of percentiles. Seems like the very lowest incomes drag the bottom 50% down and the highest incomes inflate the averages of the upper percentiles.
Not to say that I don't think the current state of income and wealth inequality aren't troublesome, it's just that in this case when they say, e.g., "top 10%", what they really mean is something closer to "95th percentile".
- pesenti 10y agoIt makes the results much more striking, even more at the top than the bottom, but not necessarily in a bad way. Raw percentiles aren't representative (e.g, knowing that the bottom 50% makes $50K and lower doesn't tell the full picture). I do think that using "median" rather than "average" would be better (though a bit trivial, median of "top 10%" is the raw 95th percentile). Also, by using "average" it is possible to match them directly to the "share of total wealth" numbers.
- breischl 10y agoI also thought that "average of the bottom 50%" was a weird metric. Seems like using the 25th percentile would make more sense. And there could be a significant difference between that and the mean-of-the-lower-half.