[p2p-research] Economic statistics

[Ryan Lanham]

Both of these are problematic in a number of ways.

Average income can be GDP/person or average wages.  I suspect you mean
average wages.  That is harder to come by for smaller nations.  Also, the
standard deviation is hugely important.  India, for instance, has high wages
for 100 million of its billion people.  But 800 million live on less than 10
dollars a day...many on less than 2 dollars a day.  Therefore you want to
understand GINI indicies.

Cost of living is normally computed by a basket and the UN has several
databases where they are present.  As a data point, it too suffers from high
variance.  London is one of the most expensive cities on earth.  But England
is not very expensive.  So too of New York City and rural Oklahoma.

Even GINI can vary greatly. London has the highest GINI index on earth but
the UK's GINI isn't all that high.  This is true in Asia nations
especially...Africa strangely enough now has the most expensive cities on
earth for executive ratings.  Of course most Africans live on less than 2
dollars per day.

I'd feel more comfortable giving pointers to data sets (Nationstates is very
good) if I knew how you intend to use it.  Averages don't mean that much,
I'm afraid.  I'd encourage you to consider standard deviations and
quintiles...which are much more useful.

On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 12:22 PM, Reid Cornwell <wrc at tcfir.org> wrote:

>  Does anyone know a ready resource for:
>
> 1.       Average annual incomes by country.
>
> 2.       Cost of living by country.
>
>
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
>
>
> Reid
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________________________________________________________________________________
> W. Reid Cornwell Ph.D.
> Chief Scientist, The Center for Internet Research
> Director, Focus on Education Foundation
> Director, Innovation Conference Series
> Adjunct Professor, Colorado Mountain College
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> Skype: reid_cornwell
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-- 
Ryan Lanham
rlanham1963 at gmail.com
Facebook: Ryan_Lanham
P.O. Box 633
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