Tan Kin Lian's Blog: Household Income Disparity

Friday, November 16, 2007

Household Income Disparity

Someone told me that Singapore has a high Gini coefficient, which indicates a wide disparity of income. I searched Google and found the following information from Wikipedia.

The disparity in household income had widened in 2000, reflecting the faster income growth for the higher-income households.

The Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality, rose from 0.446 in 1998 to 0.481 in 2000. Other measures of income inequality also indicated similar trend of increasing disparity in household income.

In the United Nations Development Programme Report 2004, Singapore's Gini coefficient based on income is 0.425 in 1998, which is ranked 78 among 127 countries in income equality. Here is the ranking of countries:

Rank
1 Azerbaijan
2 Denmark
3 Japan
4 Sweden
14 Germany
26 South Korea
28 India
31 France
40 Indonesia
52 United Kingdom
73 United States
79 Singapore
83 Hong Kong
89 China
96 Malaysia
123 Mexico

The income disparity in Singapore is worse than UK and USA, but is better than Hong Kong, China and Malaysia.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...: For income, maybe the median rather than the average should be used. For instance the average could still be very high even although majority have low incomes because a few with super high incomes pull up the average considerably.If median (half of them above median, half below it) is used, it will more likely reflect the majority. If there is a great difference between median and average it means there is a great disparity in income. So was wondering whether SG government use average or median in reporting overall income data. It may make a world of difference in whether the picture is rosy or not.; November 16, 2007 10:58 AM
Anonymous said...: The fact is rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.
The gap is widening. There are 67,000
millionaires in Singapore at the last count.; November 16, 2007 3:40 PM
Anonymous said...: And 220,000 with more than $200,000 in cash, rising 7% every year.; November 16, 2007 7:44 PM
Anonymous said...: Are there really 67,000 millionaires in Singapore? Mr Tan, are you one of the 67,000 ? :); November 16, 2007 10:18 PM
Anonymous said...: 67,000 refer to millionaire in US$.
This is the international benchmark to be considered high networth, no point being rupiah or yen millionaire right? There may be more than 67,000 if you consider S$ millionaire. But as the US$ depreciates vs S$, more can qualify for the international benchmark.; November 17, 2007 9:28 AM
Anonymous said...: All professionals, CEOs and superscale civil servants (>$200K pa) are millionaires after they work 5 to 15 years provided they do not spend more than they earn, save reasonably and do not lose big in their investments. Just do the maths. Of course those with half or million dollar salaries will attain status much faster. Any surprise there are 67,000 of them? But also 20 % are foreigners who park money in Singapore.; November 17, 2007 9:51 AM
Anonymous said...: 19,000 of the millionaires are from Indonesia..; November 17, 2007 11:10 AM
Anonymous said...: The rich gets richer and poor gets poorer is a natural state of society.

With money, you can buy more opportunities and therefore more chances of getting rich.

That's why to help the poor, education is an income leveller. With education, the poor has chance to go up the economic ladder.

To feed a man for a long time, teach him how to fish.; November 18, 2007 2:18 AM