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Society at a Glance 2009

OECD Social Indicators

Society at a Glance offers a concise quantitative overview of social trends and policies across the OECD. This 2009 edition includes a wide range of information on social issues – such as demography and family characteristics, employment and unemployment, poverty and inequality, social and health care expenditure, and work and life satisfaction –as well as a guide to help readers understand the structure of OECD social indicators.

In addition to updating some of the indicators from previous editions, Society at a Glance 2009 adds several new and innovative social indicators, including adult height, perceived health status, risky youth behaviour and bullying. For the first time, the report also provides a condensed set of headline social indicators summarising social well-being in OECD countries. In addition, a special chapter examines leisure time across the OECD.

Publication Date :: 04 May 2009
DOI :: 10.1787/soc_glance-2008-en

Chapter

Income inequality

Authors:: OECD


Pages :: 86–89
DOI :: 10.1787/soc_glance-2008-16-en

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Measures of income inequality are based on data on people’s household disposable income. Disposable income is gross household income following deduction of direct taxes and payment of social security contributions. It excludes inkind services provided to households by governments and private entities, consumption taxes, and imputed income flows due to home ownership and other real assets. People are attributed the income of the household to which they belong. Household income is adjusted to take account of household size by assuming a common equivalence scale of 0.5. The main indicator of income distribution used is the Gini coefficient. Values of the Gini coefficient range between 0 in the case of "perfect equality" (each person gets the same income) and 1 in the case of "perfect inequality" (all income goes to the share of the population with the highest income). An inter-decile income ratio, the ratio between the upper limit of the 9th decile and that of the 1st decile, is also used.

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