This blog contains posts and comments written by students in Dr. Tufte's economics classes at Southern Utah University.
3/31/2008
How to Measure Average Income
Countries measure the amount of income of citizens of that country. The IRS keeps tract of this for citizens of the United States. The government gets these numbers from tax information. Is the number for average income of a resident accurate for the actual population? In this article the argument about migration and immigration is discussed. How many illegal aliens are in the United States? How is there income accounted for? The same is true for people that migrate from countries to other countries. There is an amount of poverty that is incorrect because migration. Migration is a way people avoid poverty. People will leave the country they are born into for another in hopes of creating a new life. The article asks how to account for this type of income.
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2 comments:
Obviously the numbers are not accurate. Due to the large amount of illegal immigrants in our nation, we cannot successfully compute the average income of a resident. Illegal immigration has accounted for 12 million people. Most of who are not filing their taxes. This will definitely make average income estimates inaccurate.
This article has gotten a lot of attention in the more scholarly economics blogs.
I think it serves an interesting purpose. It shows that incomes are actually more evenly distributed than we are led to believe: the poor aren't as poor as we think they are. It also emphasizes how important freedom to emmigrate is to living standards.
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