Talk:Per capita income

Ah, but what is the ranking of median incomes, which is probably more meaningful to the ordinary person than mean incomes?

That would be interesting, but of course it would not be PER CAPITA INCOME (which is a technical term with a precise meaning) it would be MEDIAN INCOME.

Yeah, so? :-) Take this as a criticism of the usefulness of per capita income as a measure of standard of living.

And how about a ranking (and simply quantification!) in terms of purchasing power of ordinary nonluxury goods? This will help explain the strangeness of Swaziland's average $200 per year. I wouldn't be able to live on $200 per year in the U.S., but if I brought $200 with me to Swaziland, I could make it stretch so that I could live adequately, given that I have modest requirements, albeit not to average U.S. standards. E.g., a rouble these days costs about $0.035. But the purchasing power of a rouble in Russian society, when purchasing stuff like groceries and clothes and rent, is more like $0.50. So, for example, (see this page (http://www.interbaltic.com/country/russia.htm)) an average Russian these days makes a rather paltry 24,000 roubles per year; that's just $840 by the exchange rate, but in purchasing power to the Russian, it's more along the lines of $12,000. -- Larry Sanger

That is one of the main sticking points with these numerical measurements. They measure only one side of the equation.

Another point: Should per capita income include all sources of income?

For example:

wages earned
government subsidies
- housing
- food
- medical
royalty payments (Alaska, oil royalty payments)

You are talking about household income here. It inludes: income derived from work (ie wages, salaries), income derived from capital (ie interest, dividends, capital gains), and net transfers [transfers received (ie pensions, welfare, etc) - transfers contributed (ie government health insurance, pension schemes)]. Per Capita Income, however, is normaly the GDP divided by the number of citizens. WojPob