Sushee, that's not what this implies at all. If you think of a bell curve, there's a long tail of distribution at the top and bottom of the curve, so if you broke the top and bottom deciles down into incremental percentiles (eg 90th, 91st, 92nd) the average income figures for each of those would get further and further apart, pretty steeply. That's probably why they don't publish thoseI would have thought I was comfortably middle class at best. But no, we're apparently rolling in it with the Murdochs and the Rineharts, except I can't see the 'it' we're rolling in.
And, secondly, this is a measure of what's happening over a large population. There would be people in similar circumstances (supporting children not in their household, to a significant proportion of their income) right across all the brackets for whom this measure wouldn't translate very directly as an indication of their ability to build wealth. Or people in other circumstances. Like us, really, we have much higher non-discretionary expenses (medical and childcare) that are not typical of most families at our incomre or age and stage of the lifecycle.
But given that the government tries to think of the ways they can help the broadest number of families without creating further inequalities, this model does give us a glimpse of the lens they look through to try to work this out. And I think it's good to understand how these figures are calculated because it does give an idea of what sort of income people really are earning out there past our own front doorsteps.
ETA - let me just add from a personal viewpoint, I think the whole area of child support payments is very problematic, and creates all sorts of flow-on inequalities in Australia. The system intends to make things fair and equitable but really hasn't achieved this, not by a long shot.
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks