Household income data, for example, are often used to indicate the magnitude of economic disparities in a society. But to say that the top 20 percent of households have X times as much income as the bottom 20 percent of households exaggerates the disparity between flesh-and-blood human beings, which can be quite different from disparities between income brackets. That is because, despite equal numbers of households in each 20 percent, there are far more people in the top 20 percent of households.
