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The Treatment of Housing in Official Low Income Statistics
Author(s) -
Johnson Paul,
Webb Steven
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
journal of the royal statistical society: series a (statistics in society)
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.103
H-Index - 84
eISSN - 1467-985X
pISSN - 0964-1998
DOI - 10.2307/2982961
Subject(s) - official statistics , low income , statistics , low income housing , demographic economics , actuarial science , economics , econometrics , economic growth , mathematics
SUMMARY Official low income statistics contain analyses based on income ‘before’ and ‘after’ housing costs. We argue that in measuring changes in the real level of income before housing costs over time an inappropriate price index is used. In particular the price index accords insufficient weight to the relatively rapid rise in housing costs which form a disproportionately large part of the expenditures of the poor. We propose an alternative income measure which largely overcomes the sources of bias and appears to us to be a more reasonable definition of income before housing costs. In the final section we evaluate the usefulness of before and after housing costs measures.