Consumer debt crunch and division by two

Les Schaffer godzilla at netmeg.net
Sat Jun 6 18:04:24 PDT 1998


Doug> I've put the basic asset and debt distribution data into a

Doug> table at the LBO web site. See

Doug> <http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/Wealth_distrib.html>.

Doug:

on page 32 of the working paper by Kennickell and Woodburn you mentioned on your web page, it says:

"The consistent weights show a statistically significant increase in the share of household net worth held by the wealthiest 1/2 percent of households from 1992 to 1995, driven in large part by a rise in their share of personal businesses. However, looking more broadly over time, the standard error of the 1989 estimate is so large that one cannot reject the hypothesis that the 1995 and 1989 figures are the same."

any comments from the 'stats maven'? how much can one trust these kinds of numbers to display trends such as the wealth of the top 1/2% vs the bottom 90%? and what are the estimated error bars on these numbers? i didnt find them in a quick read of the Kennickell paper.

signed,

a stats wanna-bee

-- ____ Les Schaffer godzilla at netmeg.net ___| ------->> Engineering R&D <<-------- Theoretical & Applied Mechanics | Designspring, Inc. Westport, CT USA Center for Radiophysics & Space Research | http://www.designspring.com Cornell Univ. schaffer at tam.cornell.edu | les at designspring.com



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