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RandomLensmantoday at 10:37 AM1 replyview on HN

Table on page 10: https://www.boeckler.de/data/downloads/IMK/FMM%20Konferenz%2...

Not looking at households or disposable income here but at hourly wages.


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thunderbird120today at 11:11 AM

I see. That paper is looking a median income from a PPP perspective but without accounting for taxes and transfers, which is a tiny bit unorthodox in this exact context which tries to get into the weeds slightly more than just standard PPP adjusted GDP per-capita or something like that. It's valid statistically, but typically if you're trying to adjust for cost of living it makes a lot of sense to use the amount of actual income the individuals have left over after paying taxes and receiving transfers from social programs. Otherwise you'll have a number which accounts for differences in prices but not differences in the proportion of "income" which is actually retained by the earner. This is what that wikipedia article I linked is reporting. Comparing two different countries with very different tax/social program policies with PPP adjustments but without tax/transfer adjustments is less than ideal.

It's not wrong, it's just not very useful. It's typically a more intermediary statistic rather than a final one when doing this type of comparison.

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