Practice Task: SURF

Take care to link your discussion to the context and to support your statements by
referring to statistical evidence.
Situation

The New Zealand Income Survey (NZIS) is run annually during the
June quarter (April to June) by Statistics New Zealand. Among the
variables surveyed are age, highest qualification, ethnicity, martial
status, gender, weekly hours worked and weekly income in dollars.
According to Wikipedia, in many countries, there is a gender income
gap which favors males in the labor market. For example, the median
full-time salary for U.S. women is 77% of that of U.S. men. Several
factors other than discrimination may contribute to this gap. On
average, women are more likely than men to consider factors other
than pay when looking for work, and may be less willing to travel or
relocate.[38][39] Thomas Sowell, in his book Knowledge and Decisions,
claims that this difference is due to women not taking jobs due to
marriage or pregnancy, but income studies show that that does not
explain the entire difference. A U.S. Census's report stated that in US
once other factors are accounted for there is still a difference in
earnings between women and men.[40] The income gap in other
countries ranges from 53% in Botswana to -40% in Bahrain.[41]
Gender inequality and discrimination is argued to cause and
perpetuate poverty and vulnerability in society as a whole.[42]
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There would be little to suggest that there would be a similar issue in
New Zealand but it would be interesting to investigate this as a
percentage. I am puzzled by the -40% in Bahrain. How does it
become a negative value?

Problem

Identify the variables you wish to investigate, and establish a related

investigative comparison question. Consider the graphs provided.
I have chosen to investigate the weekly dollar income of NZ males
compared with NZ females. My question is, what is the difference
between the median weekly income (in dollars) for NZ males and the
median weekly income (in dollars) for NZ females.
I would expect males to earn more than females.

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Plan
Data

Analysis

Discuss features of the sample distribution.

The median weekly income for males is $743 compared with $409 for
females, a difference of $334 and even more than I would have
expected. This suggests that NZ males earn significantly more than
NZ females. In percentage terms the female income is 55% of the NZ
males income which is similar to Botswana.
Both distributions are quite spread with similar IQRs (the Male IQR
being slightly higher. There could be several reasons for this. One is
that with more males in the workforce (women being the principle
care givers) there is bound to be a larger range of incomes.
Neither distribution has many repeated values and the low values
suggest that part time work has been included. For example the
female low value of $11 for a week is unrealistic and even the LQ of
$232 equates to a little over $5/hour for a 40 hour week.
Given the much greater shift than overlap of the NZ males income
relative to the NZ females there is a good chance that there is a
difference between these populations ie NZ males have a greater
income than NZ females.

Conclusion

Make an appropriate formal statistical inference.

Communicate your findings. Include a discussion of sampling
variability, the variability of estimates, and a reflection on the process
that has been used to make the formal inference.
The difference in the median weekly dollar income between NZ males
and NZ females is somewhere between $174 and $443. As both of
these are positive, I can make the call that there is indeed
adifferenceand that NZ males are paid more than NZ females. While
this is not a surprise, the magnitude of the difference is.
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Rest of Conclusion is on a separate file.

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