On the first chart, you’re comparing household figures with individuals which isn’t fair to the households. It’s better to have an amount of money split one way than three ways.
Looks like ~29% of households are dual-income. Meaning we would need to adjust the mean income and contributions for the “US Household” columns by a factor of 1.29. The contributions/income stay the same though.
There’s really not a good on-the-fly adjustment one could make for the median measurements. The best approximation I could come up with was 15%, (which is the national median househould income divided by the national median individual income).
I have updated the original post with these adjusted numbers. It looks like my hypothesis was incorrect. An average LWer makes less and donate less than the average American.
Note: I know this is not a perfect method for transforming household income into individual income. But after two iterations, the end result is much the same, and I really don’t like the idea of creating ad hoc methodologies just because I don’t like the results.
Good catch; that axtually applies to both graphs. I will need to drag up some numbers on how many households have two income earners (as that is the only case where it would differ from the current setup). Of course, in absence of individual earner data broken out by age and income bracket (which I don’t think is out there), any attempt to adjust will be just a guess.
Before I go out and try to find data, I’ll say in advance the method and hypothesis: take the % of overall tax returns that involve two income owners. Increass the sample by that much: if 20% of 100 households have dual earners, that accounts for 120 total individual income earners. I predict that it will bring the national average down to be much more comparable with LW’s stats.
On the first chart, you’re comparing household figures with individuals which isn’t fair to the households. It’s better to have an amount of money split one way than three ways.
Looks like ~29% of households are dual-income. Meaning we would need to adjust the mean income and contributions for the “US Household” columns by a factor of 1.29. The contributions/income stay the same though.
There’s really not a good on-the-fly adjustment one could make for the median measurements. The best approximation I could come up with was 15%, (which is the national median househould income divided by the national median individual income).
I have updated the original post with these adjusted numbers. It looks like my hypothesis was incorrect. An average LWer makes less and donate less than the average American.
Note: I know this is not a perfect method for transforming household income into individual income. But after two iterations, the end result is much the same, and I really don’t like the idea of creating ad hoc methodologies just because I don’t like the results.
Good catch; that axtually applies to both graphs. I will need to drag up some numbers on how many households have two income earners (as that is the only case where it would differ from the current setup). Of course, in absence of individual earner data broken out by age and income bracket (which I don’t think is out there), any attempt to adjust will be just a guess.
Before I go out and try to find data, I’ll say in advance the method and hypothesis: take the % of overall tax returns that involve two income owners. Increass the sample by that much: if 20% of 100 households have dual earners, that accounts for 120 total individual income earners. I predict that it will bring the national average down to be much more comparable with LW’s stats.
(Forgive poor style, typing this from my phone)