The income gap between Taiwan’s highest and lowest-income households widened slightly last year, with the top 20 percent earning 6.06 times what the bottom 20 percent made, according to government statistics released on Friday.
It was the first time in six years that the household income gap widened rather than narrowed, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said.
In 2014, the disposable household income of Taiwan’s richest families was 6.05 times greater than the disposable income of the poorest families.
The latest statistics showed that the average disposable income of the top 20 percent of households was NT$1.94 million (US$61,357) last year, up 1.03 percent from the previous year.
In comparison, the disposable income of the bottom 20 percent of households averaged NT$320,000, up 1 percent from 2014, due to the government’s continued efforts to provide various subsidies for low-income families, according to the DGBAS.
The Gini coefficient, one of the most commonly used measures to reflect income inequality, rose by 0.002 points to 0.338 last year, the figures showed.
A Gini coefficient of zero indicates complete equality of income, while a figure of 1 indicates complete inequality.
Total disposable household income in Taiwan was NT$10.27 trillion last year, up 2.1 percent from the previous year. Average disposable income was NT$965,000 per household, 0.8 percent higher than the previous year, and NT$311,000 per person, indicating a 2.5 percent increase from 2014, according to the agency’s figures.
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