Gini coefficient: what it means

A single number summarising inequality of income or wealth, from 0 (everyone has the same) to 100 or 1 (one person has everything).

The Gini coefficient summarises how unequally income (or wealth) is shared across a population. It ranges from 0, where everyone has exactly the same, to 1 (or 100%), where one person has everything. The ONS and DWP both publish Gini coefficients for UK household income.

Why it matters when checking a claim

• Which income? The Gini for original income (before taxes and benefits) is much higher than for disposable income. A claim needs to say which stage of income it uses.
• Different sources give different values. The ONS figures come from the Household Finances Survey, the DWP's from the Family Resources Survey in HBAI, and international comparisons from the OECD use their own definitions.
• It hides where change happens. The same Gini can result from very different patterns, so ratios between deciles are a useful companion.

See what is the Gini coefficient for the UK.

Also searched as: Gini index, income inequality measure, Gini coefficient meaning, Gini coefficient uk

Official definitions: ONS: Household income inequality, UK · DWP: Households below average income (HBAI) statistics

Questions that use this term

• What is the Gini coefficient for the UK?
• What is the median household income in the UK?

Related terms

• Deciles and quintiles: Ways of dividing a ranked population into equal groups: ten groups (deciles) or five groups (quintiles), often used for income.
• Households below average income (HBAI): The DWP's annual statistics on the distribution of household income in the UK, the main source for official poverty figures.
• Median: The middle value when all values are ordered from lowest to highest. Half are above and half below, so a few very large values cannot pull it up.

More jobs, pay and living standards terms: ILO unemployment · Claimant count · Economic inactivity · Full-time equivalent (FTE) and headcount · Headcount · Relative and absolute poverty · Before and after housing costs (BHC and AHC) · NEET (not in education, employment or training) · Employment rate · Average weekly earnings (AWE) · Payrolled employees (PAYE RTI) · Real household disposable income (RHDI).