Today Mallard has graphs which show falling median incomes since National was in government. He has used the NZ Income Survey June Quarter 2011. Ethnicity appears at Table 4.
The figures are actually as follows.
Total (what Trevor calls 'typical') weekly median income from all sources rose from $536 to $550 between June 2008 and June 2011. It didn't drop by $35.
For Maori it dropped by $40 and Pacific $65.
Not $85 and $106 as depicted in Trevor's graphs which incidentally use the same scaling trick as yesterday.
Trevor has used inflation adjustment to 2008 figures to arrive at his considerably bigger differences eg what was $536 (according to the NZIS) in 2008 he has transformed into $585. Now I don't claim any knowledge about how inflation adjustment is done. Perhaps a reader can make comment. But what does occur to me is that those median income figures are inflation-proofed to some degree as superannuitants and beneficiaries have their incomes annually adjusted for the CPI. That's around 900,000 incomes. I can't get my head around the implications of this in further adjustments. Perhaps the drops over the period would be even greater.
Incidentally unadjusted Asian incomes rose by $61 over the same period. I wonder if he is going to produce a graph for that group?
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3 comments:
Median income net of tax is the better measure in this case, because that captures the tax cuts which put more money in tax payers pockets.
Trevor wouldn't like this approach, because it exposes the impact of tax on take home pay.
JC
It exposes jack shit about the impact of tax on take home pay if it captures income tax cuts but not GST increases - which is why the govt uses it but Labour doesn't.
Lindsay: the inflation adjustment is legitimate, on the basis that if your pay goes up by 1% but inflation goes up 3%, you've taken an effective pay cut.
But if your income - the measurement used by Trevor - goes up by the same rate as inflation, as do the incomes of around 900,000 people, then they haven't experienced an income drop. I just want to know if that is factored in. But Trevor has had my questions 'awaiting moderation' all day.
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