That’s “Household income”. Household income is the most useless and skewed statistic I can think of when it comes to equality and actual income per person.
In my mind rich people can afford to live in different homes. Poor people can not afford to do so. That means if 8 poor people who each make eg 10k a year share a household then their household earns 80k. Now if 8 less-poor people who each make eg 40k a year are split over four households then their households also make 80k each.
So now there’s 4 households of 2 people each that make as much as 1 household of 8 people. Here statistically 100% of households make exactly 40k. Regardless 50% of those 16 people still make less than 35k a year.
In reality people inside one household have different incomes, which means even among the 4 slightly richer households in the example above some inhabitants would probably make less than 35k.
One question I have is how do household-statistics count people who have multiple houses? If a rich person owns 10 houses, then does it count as 10 households who earn >35k?
People with multiple homes typically have one home that counts as their residency and those living in that house count as a household.
Other homes are secondary or recreational homes and are not counted to have residents.
Sometimes, rich people will claim to live in one home in a low income tax jurisdiction, while actually spending more time in a high income tax jurisdiction. This is tax fraud and the most recent famous case I can think of is Shakira.
Alright that makes sense. Is there any benefit to living together vs living alone as far as taxes are concerned? I suppose a couple owning two houses and each person claiming to live in a different house (ie two households) would still skew statistics - especially a median.
Fantastic points! I totally missed that household part of it and I agree that judging based off household is a really distorted view of individual financial position.
I don’t have any data. My goal was not to provide data but to call out the absurdness of creating statistics for abstract things like household incomes.
To think of household income, think of how you file taxes. You don’t claim roommates in your taxes, theyre not your household. If you and a significant other file jointly, that’s your household.
The stat isn’t as ridiculous as the other person claims
Household income doesn’t mean you and all your roommates. If you’re single and you have 3 roommates, your household is still just you for the purpose of calculating household income. If two families share a house, then each respective family has their own household income.
So what about young adults who can’t afford their own house and live with their parents or some other relatives? Are they excluded from these statistics? Do they count as a household consisting of only one person? Are they completely ignored in this statistics?
The PDF itself doesn’t specify these things. Nor does it confirm your claim. Maybe some of the data referred to in the many footnotes does. Wikipedia and Google results didn’t really answer those questions either, they only confirmed that there are many different ways to model a household.
A household includes the related family members and all the unrelated people, if any, such as lodgers, foster children, wards, or employees who share the housing unit. A person living alone in a housing unit, or a group of unrelated people sharing a housing unit such as partners or roomers, is also counted as a household.
That’s “Household income”. Household income is the most useless and skewed statistic I can think of when it comes to equality and actual income per person.
In my mind rich people can afford to live in different homes. Poor people can not afford to do so. That means if 8 poor people who each make eg 10k a year share a household then their household earns 80k. Now if 8 less-poor people who each make eg 40k a year are split over four households then their households also make 80k each.
So now there’s 4 households of 2 people each that make as much as 1 household of 8 people. Here statistically 100% of households make exactly 40k. Regardless 50% of those 16 people still make less than 35k a year.
In reality people inside one household have different incomes, which means even among the 4 slightly richer households in the example above some inhabitants would probably make less than 35k.
One question I have is how do household-statistics count people who have multiple houses? If a rich person owns 10 houses, then does it count as 10 households who earn >35k?
People with multiple homes typically have one home that counts as their residency and those living in that house count as a household.
Other homes are secondary or recreational homes and are not counted to have residents.
Sometimes, rich people will claim to live in one home in a low income tax jurisdiction, while actually spending more time in a high income tax jurisdiction. This is tax fraud and the most recent famous case I can think of is Shakira.
Alright that makes sense. Is there any benefit to living together vs living alone as far as taxes are concerned? I suppose a couple owning two houses and each person claiming to live in a different house (ie two households) would still skew statistics - especially a median.
It depends on jurisdiction.
In most countries, living together has a slight tax advantage. In some countries it has a disadvantage.
Fantastic points! I totally missed that household part of it and I agree that judging based off household is a really distorted view of individual financial position.
Do you have data on individual incomes?
I don’t have any data. My goal was not to provide data but to call out the absurdness of creating statistics for abstract things like household incomes.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA646N
To think of household income, think of how you file taxes. You don’t claim roommates in your taxes, theyre not your household. If you and a significant other file jointly, that’s your household.
The stat isn’t as ridiculous as the other person claims
Household income doesn’t mean you and all your roommates. If you’re single and you have 3 roommates, your household is still just you for the purpose of calculating household income. If two families share a house, then each respective family has their own household income.
So what about young adults who can’t afford their own house and live with their parents or some other relatives? Are they excluded from these statistics? Do they count as a household consisting of only one person? Are they completely ignored in this statistics?
The PDF itself doesn’t specify these things. Nor does it confirm your claim. Maybe some of the data referred to in the many footnotes does. Wikipedia and Google results didn’t really answer those questions either, they only confirmed that there are many different ways to model a household.
Where did you hear this brother?
https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/technical-documentation/subject-definitions.html#household
For the census, perhaps. Not for tax purposes.
Thanks for that, it really helps clearing things up!
It does! And one billionaire with a
wifelive-in sex worker (remember; they cannot love) erases thousands of dual-income partners living in povertyAre you sure that it does? Some other people are claiming that it does not and I honestly have no idea who is correct. Do you have a source for this?
Okay so here’s what I remember from 4th grade (salt it heavily; that was decades ago and I had to flake on statistics class):
There are 3 kinds of ‘average’: The mean: values of all the things added together, divided by number of things
Median: take the… I think the mean, but maybe highest and lowest, then find the actual number in the data set closest to it
Mode: number that occurs most often in the data set.
Pretty sure this uses mean. That’s the common one. Look what happens to that data when you remove extreme outliers, or just the top 1%.