Concepts and definitions
- Disposable money income
The household's disposable money income is a corresponding concept to the household's disposable income but it does not include imputed income items (e.g. imputed income received from an owner-occupied dwelling in own use). The concept includes benefits in kind related to employment relationships.
The household's disposable money income = household members' total wages and salaries + entrepreneurial income + property income (excl. imputed income items) + current transfers received - current transfers paid.
- GINI co-efficient
The Gini co-efficient describes the unevenness of a variable (such as income or property distribution). It is a generally used indicator of inequality, where the extent of the dispersion of income is described with one numerical value.
The higher value the Gini coefficient gets, the more unequally is income distributed. The biggest possible value of the Gini coefficient is one. Then the highest earning income recipient receives all the income. The smallest Gini coefficient value is 0, when the income of all income recipients is equal.
- Household
A household is formed of all those persons who live together and have meals together or otherwise use their income together. The concept of household is only used in interview surveys.
Excluded from the household population are those living permanently abroad and the institutional population (such as long-term residents of old-age homes, care institutions, prisons or hospitals).
The corresponding register-based information is household-dwelling unit. A household-dwelling unit is formed of persons living permanently in the same dwelling or address. More than one household may belong to the same household-dwelling unit. The concept of household-dwelling unit is used in register-based statistics in place of the household concept.
- Reference person
In the income distribution statistics and in the statistics of household's assets the person with the highest personal income is chosen as the household's reference person. Personal income is defined according to register data and interview data.
Although income is the main criterion determining the reference person, in some cases (e.g. entrepreneur households) the activity of the whole household is taken into account. Households of pensioner parents with children (including those over the age of consent) are also special cases where the parent with the higher income is selected as the reference person if the combined incomes of the parents clearly exceed those of a child.
Official Statistics of Finland (OSF):
Households’ assets [e-publication].
Helsinki: Statistics Finland [referred: 13.2.2012].
Access method: http://www.tilastokeskus.fi/til/vtutk/kas_en.html.
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