Personal per capita income
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Personal per capita income is a statistic used in economic analysis. It is normally calculated as the total individual resident earnings for all residents of the geographic or political region, divided by the total population of that region.
Personal per capita income is commonly used in economic analysis as an indicator of economic well being for the region or nation, but some economists argue it is flawed because a few individuals with extremely high or extremely low (or zero) salaries can dramatically offset the overall statistical picture for the region. For example, in New York, several hundred people who are in the top three percent of wealth in the US live in the same city with thousands of unemployed homeless people and millions of ordinary blue-collar workers, thus a direct analysis of personal per capita income may not give a realistic value for the actual average wage of people living in New York - the value may be too high or too low, based on the actual numbers of individuals and their real income (if any). More sophisticated economic analysis methods taking into account statistical error and statistical deviation are normally used when a more precise analysis of real income is required.
Other variations on this statistic are also calculated, such as Disposable Personal Per Capita Income, which is the amount of money that each individual has to dispose of freely after paying the ordinary bills (food, housing, utilities, credit cards, etc).
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