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by jgervin
6242 days ago
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I understand ratios. Thanks for your help. I believe they are focusing in the inequality as in average income. Meaning $ figures increased or decreased within those two groups. They are still the 90% and 10% groups so the rich got richer and poor got poorer. |
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These are the numbers they gave in the article:
Average income for top 10% in 1929: $76,625
Average income for bottom 90% in 1929: $10,847
$76,625 is $10,847 times 7.1.
Average income for top 10% in 1932: $52,026
Average income for bottom 90% in 1932: $6,688
$52,026 is $6,688 times 7.8.
They wrote: "Under President Hoover, income inequality, as measured by the ratio of the average income of the top 10 percent compared to the average income of the bottom 90 percent, rose from 7.1 percent in 1929 to 7.8 percent in 1932."
They meant: "Under President Hoover, income inequality, as measured by the ratio of the average income of the top 10 percent compared to the average income of the bottom 90 percent, rose from 7.1 in 1929 to 7.8 in 1932."
This confusion of ratios and percentage makes me doubt the competence of the authors.
I suggest you alter your wording to fix the ratio/percentage confusion. You should probably also check any other figures you used from that article.
Also, that article doesn't seem to describe a study. Are you sure your terminology is correct? You might want to call it an article rather than a study. I'm confused about what you meant by "the year the study was conducted". You might be talking about a paper by Saez, Emmanuel and Thomas Piketty, which was referenced by the article?