{"id":30664,"date":"2015-03-16T03:00:44","date_gmt":"2015-03-16T07:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=30664"},"modified":"2015-03-15T18:50:10","modified_gmt":"2015-03-15T22:50:10","slug":"comparing-statistics-from-different-sources","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/03\/16\/comparing-statistics-from-different-sources\/","title":{"rendered":"Comparing statistics from different sources"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Forbes<\/em>, Tim Worstall<\/a> points out that you need to be careful in using statistics sourced from different organizations or agencies, as they don’t necessarily measure quite the same thing, despite the names being very similar:<\/p>\n

There are certain sets of statistics put out (largely by the OECD nations like the US and so on) which we really can believe as saying exactly what is indicated upon the tin.<\/p>\n

However, that isn\u2019t the same as saying that we should be willing to just accept all such US or OECD statistical numbers. Take, for example and this is one that I have banged on about for many a year now, The US and other OECD measures of poverty. The standard OECD measure of who is in poverty is below 60% of median income, adjusted for housing costs and household size. This is a measure of inequality, not actual poverty. It is also after all of the things that are done to reduce poverty, benefits, redistribution and all that. The US measure is, again adjusted for household size but not for housing costs, a measure of actual poverty. It is not related to average incomes but to what was low income in the early 1960s updated for inflation. And more significantly, it is before almost all of the things done to try to alleviate poverty. The OECD poverty measure is thus a measure of how much (relative) poverty there is after the things done to reduce poverty and the US standard number is a measure of how much absolute poverty there is before attempts to reduce poverty.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing particularly wrong with either measure. But we\u2019ve got to be very careful in acknowledging the difference between the two before we go and do something stupid like directly compare them, US poverty rates against the poverty rates of other OECD countries. Yet we do in fact see such comparisons being made all the time.<\/p>\n

Another such little mistake of current interest is the way that we\u2019re continually told that US average wages haven\u2019t risen for decades. And it\u2019s true, in one sense, that they haven\u2019t. But wages aren\u2019t actually what we should be looking at: total compensation from work is. And that\u2019s been rising reasonably nicely over that same time period. The difference is in the benefits that we get over and above our wages from going to work. That health care insurance for example. This is more a matter of manipulation in the presentation of the statistics and if you see someone bleating about \u201cwages\u201d be very careful to check and see whether they are talking about what is of interest, compensation, or about wages which is a sign that they\u2019re trying to mislead.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Forbes, Tim Worstall points out that you need to be careful in using statistics sourced from different organizations or agencies, as they don’t necessarily measure quite the same thing, despite the names being very similar: There are certain sets of statistics put out (largely by the OECD nations like the US and so on) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,84,13],"tags":[91,290],"class_list":["post-30664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-government","category-usa","tag-poverty","tag-statistics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7YA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30664"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30665,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30664\/revisions\/30665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}