4.2.4.2 Distribution of poverty, wealth and income Quiz: AQA Sociology, Unit 2

The 20 questions

1. What is the difference between income and wealth?

   • Income is paid only to men and wealth is paid only to women, as a result of differences in employment patterns
   • Income is money held in savings accounts, while wealth is money earned from employment in a single year
   • Income is measured in pounds and wealth is measured in hours, so the two are simply different units of the same thing
   • Income is a flow of money received over a period, while wealth is the stock of assets owned at a point in time

2. What does a Gini coefficient measure?

   • The number of people in a country who are living below the official poverty line in a given year
   • The average income of the richest tenth of a population, expressed as a multiple of the average income of the poorest tenth
   • The proportion of households that own their home outright, which is used as a measure of wealth across regions
   • The degree of inequality in the distribution of income or wealth across a population, from 0 (equality) to 1 (maximum inequality)

3. Which of the following describes a quintile in an analysis of income distribution?

   • One of ten equal groups of the population, ranked by income, each containing 10 per cent of people
   • The middle 50 per cent of the population, measured by income after all taxes and benefits have been paid
   • The highest 1 per cent of earners in the population, who are usually the most visible group in income statistics
   • One of five equal groups of the population, ranked by income, each containing 20 per cent of people

4. What is a Lorenz curve used to show?

   • The growth of the working population over several decades, which is shown to measure changes in employment levels
   • The number of people who move between income groups each year, which is shown to measure social mobility
   • The change in the price of goods over time, which is shown on a curve to measure the rate of inflation in an economy
   • The cumulative share of income or wealth held by cumulative shares of the population, showing how unequal a distribution is

5. In the UK, which group has a particularly high rate of relative poverty, according to official poverty statistics?

   • Households in which at least one member is disabled
   • Households in which all members are retired and own their home without any mortgage or outstanding debts
   • Households in which there are no children and only one adult, who is in full-time work with a high salary
   • Households in which all adults are in professional employment and have university degrees and secure pensions

6. Which factor is most often linked to income inequality within the labour market?

   • Differences in the length of daily commutes, which determine the total pay that each worker receives
   • Differences in pay associated with occupation, skill, gender and qualifications
   • Differences in the colour of uniforms worn at work, which determine the official pay scale in each sector
   • Differences in the height of employees, which determine how much each employee earns in the same job

7. A household's income is 12,000, 18,000, 24,000, 30,000 and 36,000 pounds in five households. What is the median income in pounds?

   • 20,000 pounds
   • 24,000 pounds
   • 30,000 pounds
   • 18,000 pounds

8. The incomes of five households are 10,000, 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 and 100,000 pounds. What is the mean income in pounds?

   • 100,000 pounds
   • 20,000 pounds
   • 40,000 pounds
   • 30,000 pounds

9. Why might the mean income be higher than the median income in a population?

   • Median income is always adjusted for inflation, while mean income is not, so the two measures never agree
   • A small number of very high incomes pulls the mean upward, while the median is unaffected by the size of extreme values
   • Median income is always calculated from fewer households than mean income, so it is always lower in every dataset
   • Mean income includes only the poorest households, which lowers the average and makes it smaller than the median

10. Which group in the UK is most likely to have the highest rates of poverty based on ethnicity, according to official statistics?

    • Households of Chinese ethnicity, which typically report the highest levels of poverty of any ethnic group
    • Households of Indian ethnicity, which are the most deprived group in every official poverty survey in the UK
    • White British households living in rural areas, which typically report the highest levels of poverty in every region
    • Households of Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnicity

11. Which phrase best describes the distribution of wealth in the UK compared with income?

    • Wealth is usually more unequally distributed than income, with a small share of households holding a large proportion of assets
    • Wealth is distributed equally in every country, because property rights are guaranteed to all citizens by law
    • Wealth is always distributed more equally than income, because assets are shared between all members of the household
    • Wealth and income are distributed identically, because they are both based on the same measures and surveys

12. Which factor helps explain why pensioners in the UK have had lower poverty rates in recent decades than in earlier periods?

    • A rise in the number of pensioners who continue to work full time into their late eighties, which raised their incomes
    • A fall in the cost of living for older people, caused by a decrease in the price of all goods and services in the economy
    • Improvements in state and private pension provision that increased retirement income
    • A decision to abolish all benefits for pensioners, which forced pensioners to save more and so reduced poverty

13. Which measure would best show how far government taxes and benefits reduce income inequality?

    • Comparing the number of houses built each year before and after a change in planning law is passed
    • Comparing the number of hospital beds per head of population before and after a new tax is introduced
    • Comparing the Gini coefficient or income shares before and after taxes and benefits are taken into account
    • Comparing the number of people who are employed in each sector before and after the budget is announced

14. Which type of survey design would best show whether households stay in poverty over several years?

    • A census that counts every person in the population once every ten years, without repeat contact with households
    • A longitudinal panel survey that follows the same households over time
    • A cross-sectional survey that interviews a new random sample of households at a single point in time only
    • A case study of one town that records the income of its residents on a single day in each decade

15. A sociologist finds that the top 10 per cent of households hold a much larger share of total wealth than the bottom 50 per cent. What is the best description of this pattern?

    • A highly concentrated distribution of wealth, which indicates significant inequality in ownership of assets
    • An equal distribution of wealth, which shows that every household owns the same share of assets as the others
    • A random distribution of wealth, which shows that assets are allocated by chance with no link to social factors
    • A balanced distribution of wealth, which shows that most households in the economy have roughly equal assets

16. Which factor is most likely to reduce the ability of a household to build wealth over time?

    • Persistently low income that leaves little room for saving or for purchasing a home
    • Receiving a regular pension from a long career, which is the main source of savings for most households
    • Holding investments in shares and bonds, which is always the most reliable route to a secure long-term income
    • Owning a home outright, which is the most common way in which households accumulate wealth in the long term

17. Evaluate the claim that income inequality in the UK is mainly caused by differences in individual effort.

    • The claim is irrelevant, because income inequality does not exist in the UK, since all households receive equal pay
    • The claim overlooks structural factors such as occupation, education, gender and inherited wealth, which shape earnings and opportunities
    • The claim is fully proven, because all differences in income are the result of individual effort, and nothing else affects pay or promotion
    • The claim is confirmed by the fact that income distribution has never changed in any decade since statistics began

18. Which conclusion best follows from data showing that the bottom quintile has a much lower mean income than the top quintile?

    • The gap shows that income is distributed equally, because each quintile contains an equal number of households
    • The bottom quintile is not poor, because the difference between groups shows that all households have sufficient income
    • The top quintile is not wealthy, because high income levels in any society can never produce advantage over others
    • There is a substantial gap in income between the groups, which indicates income inequality in that society

19. A survey finds that the top fifth of households receives 45 per cent of total income and the bottom fifth receives 5 per cent. What does this indicate?

    • Income is distributed almost equally, since each fifth receives a share close to the 20 per cent it would get under equality
    • Income inequality is lower than average, since the top fifth receives less than half of total income in the economy
    • Substantial income inequality, with the top fifth receiving nine times the share of the bottom fifth
    • Only the middle fifth receives an unfair share, so inequality is concentrated in the middle of the distribution alone

20. What is a decile in the analysis of income distribution?

    • The highest one per cent of earners, who are usually the most visible group in national income statistics and reports
    • The middle half of the population measured by income after tax and benefits have been paid in full to each household
    • One of five equal groups ranked by income, each containing 20 per cent of the population, which is used in most UK surveys
    • One of ten equal groups of the population ranked by income, each containing 10 per cent of people

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