In my previous post I discussed the very high median household income in Howard County in 2012, and noted that median household income is only part of the story: It shows how a “middle income” household is doing, but doesn’t say anything about how income is distributed among the various households. How do we measure the relative distribution of income across households, and what does this measure say about Howard County? ...
When I started blogging about Howard County issues just over five years ago it was in response to a post by Dennis Lane quoting Alan Klein on the “wealthy few” in Howard County. I followed that up with a two-part series on income inequality in Howard County (part 1, part 2), using US Census data. It’s therefore appropriate that I post today on the latest Census data on Howard County income figures for 2012, which were released last Thursday. ...
(This is part 2 of a two-part post; for background on the Gini coefficient see part 1.) I previously discussed use of the Gini coefficient as a way to measure income inequality (or equality, as the case may be), and promised to discuss why Howard County is noteworthy in this regard. In brief, Howard County is one of only seven counties in the US (out of 800 counties and other geographic areas) that rank in the top 5% (positions 1-40) for both median household income and income equality (as measured by the Gini coefficient): ...
(This is part 1 of a two-part post; for the conclusion see part 2.) In a previous post I discussed the concept of median income and how it avoids certain distortions inherent in mean (average) income. However median income by itself is not adequate to characterize the economic status of households in Howard County (or anywhere else for that matter). In particular, the median income just provides the “midpoint” for income, i.e., the income value for which 50% of the households make more and 50% make less; it does not address the question of how income is actually distributed among the various households. ...