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How are "weekly earnings" calculated? For instance, I get all of my income in lump sums, typically two or three times per year. Does that mean my weekly earning

How are "weekly earnings" calculated? For instance, I get all of my income in lump sums, typically two or three times per year. Does that mean my weekly earnings are $0 (or some really large number if you get me on a specific week), or do they take yearly income and divide it by the number of weeks? If the latter, why bother breaking it down to per week? Also, given that the Bureau of Labour is the source, do they include non-labour income sources? It seems pretty important, at least in my mind, to include all income sources. The average high school-only graduate will have $100K of potential to invest by the time someone in college graduates. Even with a low 3% interest rate, that is $3,000 in additional income for high school grads each year. Educational Attainment by Annual Household Income: http://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/glqwiblfrkemnu8b6ij8aq.gif http://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Prod...

timr 13y ago
The source is cited. If you truly care, you can look into the methodology to your heart's content. The Gallup link you provide doesn't tell you anything about causality because the relationship is backwards ("educational attainment by income"), while still providing data to refute your original argument (there's a clear positive correlation between education and wealth).
- randomdata 13y ago
  > there's a clear positive correlation between education and wealth I'm not seeing it. There is very little variance except on the lowest rungs: <20K 5% 20-29K 8% 30-39K 11% 40-49K 14% 50-74K 18% 75-99K 22% 100-149K 25% 150-249K 25% 250-499K 24% 500K+ 23% And we can derive from other data that people with the lowest incomes tend to be people just entering the workforce. i.e. someone straight out of high school might work a low paying job to gain experience in the field instead of furthering education. By the time his peers are graduating, the gap narrows considerably. If bachelor's degrees and incomes had a significant correlation, you would expect a considerable increase in each income bracket like you see for the postgraduates, not just a few percentage points between them. The only interesting correlation is with those who have post-graduate educations, but that was never disputed. It was the argument all along.
  - timr 13y ago
    There's a positive correlation between those data series. If you use the original data, instead of subtracting the columns (arbitrarily), the correlation is stronger. For both columns. But hey, you keep arguing with facts. I have better things to do.

timr 13y ago

The source is cited. If you truly care, you can look into the methodology to your heart's content. The Gallup link you provide doesn't tell you anything about causality because the relationship is backwards ("educational attainment by income"), while still providing data to refute your original argument (there's a clear positive correlation between education and wealth).

randomdata 13y ago
> there's a clear positive correlation between education and wealth I'm not seeing it. There is very little variance except on the lowest rungs: <20K 5% 20-29K 8% 30-39K 11% 40-49K 14% 50-74K 18% 75-99K 22% 100-149K 25% 150-249K 25% 250-499K 24% 500K+ 23% And we can derive from other data that people with the lowest incomes tend to be people just entering the workforce. i.e. someone straight out of high school might work a low paying job to gain experience in the field instead of furthering education. By the time his peers are graduating, the gap narrows considerably. If bachelor's degrees and incomes had a significant correlation, you would expect a considerable increase in each income bracket like you see for the postgraduates, not just a few percentage points between them. The only interesting correlation is with those who have post-graduate educations, but that was never disputed. It was the argument all along.
- timr 13y ago
  There's a positive correlation between those data series. If you use the original data, instead of subtracting the columns (arbitrarily), the correlation is stronger. For both columns. But hey, you keep arguing with facts. I have better things to do.