help me scam my students

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Thu Aug 9 08:19:22 PDT 2001


Michael McIntyre wrote:


>So how can you help? Well, I'm looking for a little technical
>support here. To make the second part work, it would be good to
>have data on the world distribution of income fine-grained enough to
>allow me to interpoate per capita incomes at specified percentile
>levels (17, 31, 44, 56, 67, 75, 83, 89, 94, and 97 to be exact). If
>that data is out there, I haven't seen it. I'm willing to go with
>relatively unrefined data (non-PPP adjusted, based on median
>national incomes, etc.) as long as I can use it to make a dirty
>ball-park interpolation.

World Bank economist Branko Milanovic has a paper on world income distribution <http://wbln0018.worldbank.org/research/workpapers.nsf/(allworkingpapers)/8DEA74BC10A97DCF8525683300663553?OpenDocument> that blends national household surveys into what he claims is the first true attempt at measuring the beast. Here's a percentile table (1993 figures, using PPP US$):

percentile income

5 238

10 318

15 373

20 432

25 496

30 586

35 658

40 742

45 883

50 1,044

55 1,165

60 1,505

65 1,857

70 2,327

75 3,006

80 4,508

85 6,563

90 9,110

95 13,241

99 24,447

So, world median income is about US$1,044. Someone with a poverty-level income in the U.S. is at the 95th percentile of world income.

Doug



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