• 𝕯𝖎𝖕𝖘𝖍𝖎𝖙@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          We asked respondents to describe their current income situation.

          You mean 40% of forbes readers live paycheck to paycheck?!

          This may surprise you but not everyone reads forbes.

          (selection bias)

          • 𝕯𝖎𝖕𝖘𝖍𝖎𝖙@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            Lots of articles are saying 60 to 69%. CNBC, Barrons, LendingClub. I can’t find a better source but… 40% from a rich person’s mag like forbes is just too much man. I would estimate 55% to 70%, so 80% doesn’t seem that far off.

              • 𝕯𝖎𝖕𝖘𝖍𝖎𝖙@lemmy.world
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                10 months ago

                Neither you nor I have a decent source yet. All of these sources are from surveys, you just pick your organization. A skimming of the google search results for this gives numbers in the 55% to 69% range, but that’s not a good source. So far what we’ve found is:

                Forbes survey: 40% Lending club survey 60%

                I don’t have a source for 80% where the meme claimed.

                • iopq@lemmy.world
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                  10 months ago

                  Because 80% is not correct. The median person has $8,000 saved in just their bank accounts, not including retirement (which you can take out paying a penalty) and CoD (which you can take out after paying a few months penalty)

                  https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/savings/average-savings-by-age/

                  So half of people have more than this amount saved. I personally have less than this in my bank and a lot more in taxable investments which were not measured

                  How do people save if 80% are living paycheck to paycheck?

            • 𝕯𝖎𝖕𝖘𝖍𝖎𝖙@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              I mean, forbes did the survey. Do you think they didn’t use their reader base?

              As for only surveying readers, lemme look at the survey and see if it said that. My concern is that a magazine performing a survey is going to have some issues with selection bias.

              edit:

              So, in this case, it suffers from a very small sample size. There may be funding concerns too.

              • iopq@lemmy.world
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                10 months ago

                3000 is not a small sample size. 30 is a small sample size.

                Presidential polls are often done with this, or even smaller sample sizes.

                • 𝕯𝖎𝖕𝖘𝖍𝖎𝖙@lemmy.world
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                  10 months ago

                  This may surprise you to know but America has a little over 3000 people in it. Some estimate the number to be over 1,000,000!

                  Now, if we estimate the american population to be at 1,000,000, that means 3,000 is a sample size of only 0.3%.

                  Now, 0.3% may seem like a large number and indeed it is when compared to 30, which would be a sample size of 0.03%.

                  I wonder how big the working population of america is?

                  United States Employed Persons was reported at 161,183,000.000 Person in Dec 2023 See the table below for more data.

                  Hmm, so it seems 161,183,000 is a bit larger than 1,000,000. It’s actually about 161.183 times my original estimate! That would make 3,000 people bout 0.001%.

                  Now, 0.001% is a very small number.

                  • iopq@lemmy.world
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                    10 months ago

                    You might want to look up sampling. If the sample is randomly distributed, you can calculate the chance that the given data is because of sampling error.

                    You see, it doesn’t matter what the total population is for the sampling error. It only matters what your number of samples is and the absolute difference between the groups.