Comments on: Household Disposable Income Down

By: Household Income

Household Income — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 14:39:29 +0000

[...] wonders about houshold income, I’ve had a response. For those who didn’t see it, I was wondering about [...]

By: Matthew

Matthew — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 13:17:14 +0000

As I said, I imagine it’s a ‘typical’ two-earner, two children household. All the pensioners, students and unemployed etc will be out of the calculation

Tim adds: I wrote to the people who sponsored it and have a copy of their press release. Doesn’t define “average household” though, waiting for clarification on that.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 11:12:29 +0000

This is about as definitive as we’ll get – add 3-4% onto these numbers to get current?

As National Statistician, I have been asked to reply to your recent questions asking what the (a) median and (b) mean gross
19 July 2006 : Column 520W
household income was in the latest year available and what the lower limit of the top decile is for gross household earnings for the latest year (85778, 85779).

These estimates are based on the ONS analyses “The effects of taxes and benefits on household income” which is published annually. The latest analysis for 2004/05 was published on the National Statistics website on 12th May 2006 at http://www.statistics.gov.uk/taxesbenefits. It is based on the Expenditure and Food Survey, which has a sample covering approximately 7,000 households in the UK. The analysis for 2005/06 is due to be published on the National Statistics website in May 2007.

Gross incomes include income from employment, self-employment, pensions, investment income, and cash benefits. The median gross household income in 2004/05 was £24,700 per year. The mean household gross income (which appears in table 14, appendix 1) was £31,884 per year.

Tim adds: Well tracked down. 3-5% would seem about right, yes. So this survey is, umm, bollocks then. Wonder where the error is?

By: Mark Wadsworth

Mark Wadsworth — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 09:23:25 +0000

And median incomes are always lower than the mean. So the median might be, what, £30,000 or so?

By: Mark Wadsworth

Mark Wadsworth — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 09:22:40 +0000

Average/median wage is somewhere around £25,000, plus or minus a few thousand.

£53,835 is clearly complete and utter bollocks. GDP is just over £1,200 bn and there are 25 million households, so even if businesses retained no profits whatsoever, average i.e. mean household income would be £48,000.

But clearly, part of GDP is retained by businesses (as opposed to households) and part is ‘earned’ by the State in the first place (I am told that GSCE results are included!), so my magic fag packet tells me that average cash household gross income of about £40,000 before tax and benefits plus minus a few thousand must be about right.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 08:28:32 +0000

At a guess, I imagine they don’t that favourite of Telegraph-reported Tory accountants and come up with a ‘typical family’, which as always will have been datamined to death and for some reason only spends its disposable income on things the Labour government has increased taxes on or that have risen in price.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 08:27:10 +0000

This (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=334) puts it last year at under £30,000.

Also mobile phone bills have risen partly because – mostly perhaps – the services used have expanded so much.

Tim adds: That’s what I meant (perhaps obscurely) by “compositional change”