# Latest income deciles for Australia



## sydboy007 (14 July 2013)

thought it might help  readers to see what the latest income deciles are (from the ABS)

Certainly helps to keep perspective, especially when strugle street is now $150K, or even $250K depending on who the MSM decides to reference.  I find it funny that no one ever asks these struggling households what they actually spend their money on.


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## FlyingFox (14 July 2013)

sydboy007 said:


> Certainly helps to keep perspective, especially when strugle street is now $150K, or even $250K depending on who the MSM decides to reference.  I find it funny that no one ever asks these struggling households what they actually spend their money on.




Investment Property and PPOR


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## sydboy007 (14 July 2013)

FlyingFox said:


> Investment Property and PPOR




Definitely.  A humongous mortgage they signed with a gun to their head, then fully furnished with debt, and equity mated those European holidays and skit trips to Japan and USA.

It does give a bit of clarity to the debate though.


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## Chris1zillion (14 July 2013)

Hi,
This might sound ignorant or that I dont understand what im looking at, but what use is this information if it doesnt tell you what parcentages are in these groups, or is the point just to tell you how high you might be on the earnings scale when you actually think your low or vice versa.


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## FlyingFox (14 July 2013)

Chris1zillion said:


> Hi,
> This might sound ignorant or that I dont understand what im looking at, but what use is this information if it doesnt tell you what parcentages are in these groups, or is the point just to tell you how high you might be on the earnings scale when you actually think your low or vice versa.




They are income deciles. i.e 10% of the population falls in each group with the lowest 10% in group 1 and the next 10% in group 2 and so on.


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## FlyingFox (14 July 2013)

sydboy007 said:


> Definitely.  A humongous mortgage they signed with a gun to their head, then fully furnished with debt, and equity mated those European holidays and skit trips to Japan and USA.
> 
> It does give a bit of clarity to the debate though.




I don't think they have a gun to their head well the majority don't. Many in the higher income brackets will be fairly well educated. However many think they are getting better of the system with negative equity etc and fail to do the math. Same goes for PPOR. Just a case of the neighbors are doing it etc and we have had a prosperous economy for over 20 yrs. 

The more interesting result was this one:

http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2013/05/what-is-the-typical-australian-income-in-2013/

http://media.wix.com/ugd/b629ee_1559eb79b895925d91f6bb7b119251f4.pdf


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## So_Cynical (14 July 2013)

So $490 to $860 gross is true middle income (as i have always thought) and way under the official average wage


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## FlyingFox (14 July 2013)

So_Cynical said:


> So $490 to $860 gross is true middle income (as i have always thought) and way under the official average wage




Um your point being? Average vs median. Average will always be skewed by outlier in a non-normal distribution.


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## Smurf1976 (14 July 2013)

That I own my home outright, and that it is by it's nature relatively cheap to operate and maintain, gives me a substantial source of "hidden" income that will not be reflected in any official statistics.

Without this asset, I'd need to earn a lot more in order to rent an equivalent property, or any property for that matter. Even things like it being cheap to operate and maintain (relative to many other houses) represents a significant ongoing financial saving.

To put it all into perspective, if you are living in Australia, are in good health, have ongoing employment and aren't in serious debt due to something that went wrong in the past then you are doing better than at least 90% of people on Earth. That's true even if you are well down the list in terms of income. So really, it's a question of whether you are in the top 90% of people on Earth, or the top 95% or the top 99% but most Australians are doing very nicely by global standards.


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## FlyingFox (14 July 2013)

Smurf1976 said:


> That I own my home outright, and that it is by it's nature relatively cheap to operate and maintain, gives me a substantial source of "hidden" income that will not be reflected in any official statistics.




+1. A big difference. For those that didn't get on the property ladder, a probable lifetime of debt regardless of what deciles your income is in.


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## skc (14 July 2013)

sydboy007 said:


> thought it might help  readers to see what the latest income deciles are (from the ABS)
> 
> Certainly helps to keep perspective, especially when strugle street is now $150K, or even $250K depending on who the MSM decides to reference.  I find it funny that no one ever asks these struggling households what they actually spend their money on.




What is the difference between the 2nd and 3rd set of figures? What does "equivalent" means?



So_Cynical said:


> So $490 to $860 gross is true middle income (as i have always thought) and way under the official average wage




One examplnation may be that average wage means average of those people earning a wage (i.e. with employment). Middle income would always be lower as the set potentially includes those who don't earn a wage (e.g. on welfare). And does gross cash income means before or after tax (gross implies before tax while cash implies after tax)? If it is after tax the comparison isn't that far off. You'd need to check the methodology of the ABS to make sure you are comparing apples with apples.


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## Sharkman (15 July 2013)

skc said:


> What is the difference between the 2nd and 3rd set of figures? What does "equivalent" means?




my first thought was that it means divided by the avg number of income earners in the respective households, but turns out i was wrong...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivalisation


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## sydboy007 (15 July 2013)

I suppose I should count myself lucky - am mortgage free, near the top of the decile food chain, a house that is cheaper to run since I got my free roof bats, near reasonable public transport in the inner city of Sydney, and I don't go shopping every week.

I do find it a bit sad that 50% of working age Aussies earn less than $670 a week.

I think these kinds of statistics need to be made more freely available.

I'd love to see these decile bands used as the basis of determining who is able to get welfare.

I'd prefer to see welfare restricted to say the lowest 3 deciles with a tapering off to about mid way between the 3rd and 4th.  A 150K a year household income still lives up near the top of the decile food chain.


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## ROE (15 July 2013)

http://www.globalrichlist.com/


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## Zedd (15 July 2013)

Interesting stats. 

What catches my eye is that apparently 50% of the population are earning less than a full-time minimum wage,
up to 40% on less than the aged pension and up to 30% of the population are earning less than the NewStart Allowance.

Can you throw us the original link, I'd like to see what caveats come with the data for me to see what I'm missing.
I did have a quick look through the ABS site but couldn't put my hands on these tables.


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## sydboy007 (16 July 2013)

Zedd said:


> Interesting stats.
> 
> What catches my eye is that apparently 50% of the population are earning less than a full-time minimum wage,
> up to 40% on less than the aged pension and up to 30% of the population are earning less than the NewStart Allowance.
> ...




finally found it

http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@...prodno=4363.0.55.001&issue=2011-13&num=&view=


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