THE STANDARD CLASSIFICATION
13. Deciles or quintiles should be used to group persons, income units, families and households according to 'Total cash income', and can also be used to classify subgroups of the population, e.g. employees, by income deciles.
14. A classification using income quantiles also allows for a simple comparison of incomes over time and across different population groups. For example, if an income decile classification is used at two different points in time, then one can analyse other characteristics of the poorest ten per cent of the population, the richest ten per cent, etc. This is not possible where data are collected or output in fixed dollar ranges which require periodic updating due to inflation.
15. Where cash income data are collected in ranges (as in the 2001 census), a different methodology is required to derive 'Total cash income' at the income unit, family and household level, as it is not possible to aggregate person level income ranges directly. To overcome this, data from the most recent SIHC is used to impute an income value for each person. The imputed values for each person are then aggregated to derive imputed household and family level incomes. Further discussion of the disadvantages of collection of cash income in ranges can be found in the Measurement Issues and Related Classifications section.
STANDARD INPUT CATEGORIES
16. The standard input categories for cash income are actual dollar amounts as follows:
a) Negative income ($-999999-$1)
b) Zero income
c) Positive income ($1-999999)
17. Where amounts of cash income are separately collected for more than one source, the values must be summed to derive a value for 'Total cash income'. In surveys collecting cash income in ranges, the input categories are those ranges.
STANDARD OUTPUT CATEGORIES
18. The standard output categories of 'Total cash income' are quintiles, or less frequently, deciles, as discussed in the The standard classification Section. Dollar values for decile/quintile cut-off points or for mean or median values may also be included in published tables to provide additional information.
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