Appendix: Data Issues
Measuring Earnings and Income
All incomes are derived from the HLFS-IS data. Our main earnings measure, Annualised Earnings, includes wages and salaries, self-employment income and earnings-related ACC income. Our main income measure, Annualised Total Income, includes earnings and other transfer and private pension income. (Note that, although collected by the HLFS-IS, investment income is considered potentially too sensitive and has not been included in the HLFS-IS extracts made available to us.) Each of these measures are reported in the HLFS-IS data extract on a weekly basis, and we have annualised them by multiplying by 52.14.
The HLFS-IS also collects categorical information from individuals on their total income over the last year. Statistics New Zealand assigns a weighted-average mid-point value for each categorical range. For comparative sample statistics we have used these values as the Annual Income Bracket measure.
All earnings and income measures have been inflation- adjusted using the CPI and are reported in September 2004 dollar values.
