Regarding the unevenness of extreme rich and poor, how much data is actually wrong?

This article is selected from "The Top Ten Data Laws of Pinzon: Acknowledge the Top Ten Data Laws", [British] Tim Harford

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"Le Shi: The wealth of the world's richest 85 people in the world is equal to the half of the wealth of the most poor population in the world."

This is the headline news of the Guardian in January 2014. I believe you may have heard of this statement. The "Independence" reported similar research published by the Charity Development Agency Le Shi, and many other media followed the trend and reported them one after another. The results of this survey made the public uproar, but what did it want to tell us?

In fact, the purpose of Le Shi is to attract the attention of the public. They just want to get hot search and make traffic. As for the truth, it is a secondary issue.

Three years later, Le Shi made a major modification of the investigation report, and the title changed from "85 billionaires" to "8 -bit billionaire". Is the unequal to the poor and the poor 10 times more serious? Is the wealth of billionaires increased by 10 times, or did the wealth of the poor shrink 90%for no reason? This is not right, there have been no major economic crisis in the past few years. The propaganda of Le Shi made the poor and the poor's uneven phenomenon that suddenly aroused the indignation of the people, so that the people could no longer calmly discern and reflect on the authenticity of the data.

The investigation data of Le Shi can be changed so much. Do you think that the unequal to study this report to study the unequal to the rich and the poor?

The media rushed to report, and the data was different, which was confused. The Guardian accurately repeatedly repeatedly repeated the title of Le Shihui official -the world's richest wealth sum is equal to the half of the wealth of the most poor population in the world, but the "Independent News" uses an information chart It is said that the wealth of the world's richest people in the world is the same as the total wealth of the world's population. A trailer for a documentary made by the BBC is also used by the preview film of the super rich. The meaning of these two methods is very different. How can this?

If you don't understand, let me tell you the facts.

World wealth is not half of the poor, where there is any wealth for the poor. But it is not 85 (or 8?) Billionaires of the rich country have captured most of the world's wealth. The big head of wealth is possession of hundreds of millions of middle -income groups, like you. The "Independence" and BBC confused "half of the wealth of the poor" and "the wealth of non -billionaires". Although this is only a problem that is not very clear in conceptual definition, it is reflected in the number of numbers. It is a thousand miles, which is less than 2 trillion US dollars and more than 2 trillion US dollars. There is no repeated conclusion that it will cause a serious fallacy of such numbers.

There is an astounding example of the "Independence" on the number. It is metaphorical that the wealth of these 85 richest people is equivalent to the wealth of 1%of the wealthy people in the world. What? Does this mean that there are only 8,500 people in the world? If the previous statement is a hundred times error, this time it is nearly a million level errors.

We should reflect on the absurd mistake of "Independence". It reminds us that people are easily excited.

Yes, this world is so unfair, with Zhumen wine stinky and frozen bones. When we stare at these unfair phenomena, it means that we start to feel emotional. The "Independence" can mix 8 billion people with 8500 people, and can confuse half of the wealth of the most poor population in the world with the wealth of the middle class, and the people are blinded. This error is already ridiculous. Like Abraham Bredius, once we faint about something instead of using our heart, we wait for the mistake.

Here I also wake up. As long as people with brains, they can be calculated with their toes. No matter who the "1%" of the world's population is, there must be more than 85 people. But why no one pointed out this absurd mistake? Does the world have no brains?

However, the more such confused information, the more we need to understand the matter. Let's go back to the front of the blackboard, start with the first problem, first figure out what the statistical subject is, and what statistical solution we adopted.

The main body of wealth statistics is net assets, that is, the remaining assets such as houses, stocks, and bank cash subtracting debts. If you have a $ 250,000 property, but there are $ 100,000 mortgage loans, then net assets are $ 150,000. The statistical report of Le Shi came. Credit Researchers hired researchers to accumulate the wealth of the world's poor people 18, and then accumulated the wealth of top billionaires according to the wealth list in the newspaper. They found that the money of the rich exceeded the poverty of the world when it was added to 85th, which was about half of the wealth of about 2.4 billion adult population (Researchers of Credit Swiss do not care about children).

But can personal net assets really conclude that this person is poor or rich?

Suppose you have a $ 50,000 model and bought a sports car of $ 50,000. The moment you drive it away from the 4S shop, the sports car depreciates thousands of dollars in an instant, that is, your net assets are less than thousands of dollars. If you have just finished the expensive MBA (Master of Business Administration), or law school, or medical school, for this, you have borrowed hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and your net assets are negative at this time. But the day of a young doctor may still be more moisturized than a self -sufficient young farmer. Even if the doctor still owes giant debt, farmers also have a thin cow and a bicycle worth $ 100. Net assets are a good way to measure wealth, but not a good way to judge the rich and the poor. Many people's assets are zero or even negative. Some of these people are really poor, and some doctors who have just graduated, he will return foreign debts soon.

Another problem is that when you add some zero and negative numbers, you can never get a positive number. I counted the money in my son's money last time, which was £ 12.73. This means that my son's assets have added more assets in the world's poorest. Can this prove that my son is a rich man? joke. Can this prove that the red poverty occurs only somewhere? It cannot be proved, at least not directly proved. We are shocked by the fact that more than 1 billion people are named, but it is not clear what to add to these zero up.

Anyway, in addition to explaining 1 billion or zero, I didn't understand one or two. Just like doing mathematical papers, review the questions first, and then move. We must also figure out the meaning of these numbers first, and then start statistics. Only at this time, it was mathematics to play, and the problem can be explained very clearly as long as it is simply calculated. Look at the global wealth report of Swiss Credit, which is the source of statistics from Le Shi. Let's take a look at the number of numbers to clarify the problem.

· The world's personal wealth of 42 million people exceeds $ 1 million, and the total wealth of these people reaches US $ 142 trillion. One of them has the wealth of others reached a trillion level, but most of them have not arrived. If you have a beautiful house in London, New York, or Tokyo, or a private company to give you a good pension, you will easily become a member of this class. Nearly 1%of people around the world belong to the crowd on the tip of this pyramid.

· The world's assets of 436 million people are from 100,000 to 1 million US dollars, that is, the total wealth of this group is US $ 125 trillion. Nearly 10%of the world's population belongs to this second echelon.

· These two groups are together to master the vast majority of wealth in the world.

· Another 1 billion person's personal wealth is 10,000 to 100,000 US dollars, and their total assets reach $ 4 trillion.

· The remaining 3.2 billion people's per capita wealth is less than 2,000 US dollars, and the total wealth is only $ 6.2 trillion. Among these people, some people's income is much lower than the average level.

To put it simply, the world's richest 500 million people have most of the money, and another 1 billion people get the remaining money. Supervivatives are like those 85ths, so they have less than 1%of the total wealth.

This kind of data depicts us with more detailed information distribution information of world wealth, rather than a "fatal fact" that has never noisted the rich and the poor. The word "fatal facts" in Le Shi has the original love. After all, it is for bloggers' attention and persuasion, but my purpose is to understand the truth of all things. In fact, these data are easy to find on the Internet, and it will come out if you search, so it is not technology, but whether you have the heart to explore the truth.

At least Le Shi understands that it is said to wealth inequality. We often hear that someone is vaguely "inequality has intensified". None of them know what inequality he is talking about, whose inequality between who is, and how to measure inequality. People shouted that "inequality has exacerbated", perhaps because they saw the statistics of Le Shi reduced 85 billion billionaires to 8, maybe they refer to people's income phenomenon.

If you want to understand people's lifestyle and their daily consumption power, uneven income can reflect the problem. What we eat, what we wear, and what life we ​​live, often have nothing to do with our assets, and it is related to the fixed income of wages, pensions, social security or small business. Few people have the money to live purely on interest. Therefore, if we want to understand the embodiment of the unequal daily life of the rich and the poor, we can pay more attention to the inequality of income rather than wealth. Another advantage of income is that we will not get such ridiculous conclusions such as the wealth of a money jar of ordinary elementary school students than 1 billion people.

If we want to compare income unequal, who can choose as the main body of comparison?人们首先想到的一定是拿富人和穷人做比较，但除此之外，其实还有其他的比较对象，譬如国家之间、种族之间、男女之间、不同年龄之间、一个国家内不同Region and so on.

But even if we determine the inequality of income, with high -income and low -income people, there is another problem to be clear: what plan is measured. Here are several possible measurement schemes. You can compare the income median (income in the income distribution in the middle of the income distribution) with the income of 10%of the person at the bottom of the income (the income of the person at the bottom of the income distribution). This is the so -called 50/10 ratio, which shows the difference in income from the middle class compared to the middle class. You can also look at the income share of 1%of the person with the highest income. This is not only a reflection of hundreds of millions of rich people, but also a good indicator of the living conditions of millionaires. You don't even have to do it by yourself. Even if the pockets of the fiscal owners have long been the fiscal and researchers, those data will be checked online.

Many problems are because people go wrong from the beginning. They are obsessed with statistical technical issues, such as asking about sampling errors and errors, the number of debate numbers rising or decreased, believing, doubt, analysis, and analysis of various numbers. Question: What are the statistical objects? What standards do you use?

We must first figure out what the statistical object of the data is, and the second is mathematics calculation.

The world is intricate, we should not expect statistics to always give a non -black or white conclusion

"Subscribe Truth"

[English] Tim Harford translated by Zheng Xiaoyun

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【brief introduction】

Statistics are easy to lie, but there is no statistical data, and lies are easier.

In the era of chaotic information, people seem to have lost a cognitive ability: statistical data can help us put together the truth of the world. Losing this belief is not because of the false data, but it is difficult to find the truth of the world. In fact, data can make the world better in the hands of the right person. In contrast to the general view, good statistics are not a trick or an eye -catching method. They are like astronomers' telescope, bacteriologists' microscopes, and radiologists' X -rays, which can make us become in the world of prosperous worlds. smarter.

Economist Tim Harford believes that good statistics are not used to distort the truth or cover the facts, but to let everyone identify the truth. By understanding the essence of statistics, people can cross logical errors, emotional factors, and cognitive bias to reach the other side of the truth. When people look around through the "telescope" of statistics, they will be surprised to find that they can see the world so clearly.

This book lists the top ten rules to help readers understand statistics, and use a large number of vivid, lively and well -known stories, supplemented by a large amount of information to prove it, to take everyone in the world full of false information, bad research and poor motivation. Prices of data make "communication with data" more credible, and teach everyone to use statistics correctly to help individuals, organizations or government departments make better decisions.

【About the Author】

Tim Harford

Master of humorous living economics, well -known columnist "Financial Times". In the column, he used cutting -edge economics theories to provide readers with a variety of questions and complaints to provide a relaxed and witty economic interpretation.

Honorary member of the Royal Statistics Association, a member of the Nafield College of Oxford University, has won many economics and statistical journalism awards. In 2019, he was awarded the Medal of the Great British Empire for his contribution to the "popularization and promotion of economics". Tim lives with his wife and three children in Oxford.

He is the author of "Chaos", "Undercover Economics" (all four volumes), and "100 major inventions of modern economy".

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