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Owning an iPhone is the Number-One Way To Guess if You're Rich or Not, Research Finds (businessinsider.com)

Posted by msmash on from the how-about-that dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In the United States, if you have an Apple iPhone or iPad, it's a strong sign that you make a lot of money. That's one of the takeaways from a new National Bureau of Economic Research working paper from University of Chicago economists Marianne Bertrand and Emir Kamenica. "Across all years in our data, no individual brand is as predictive of being high-income as owning an Apple iPhone in 2016," the researchers wrote. There are details and caveats to the research, but the economists found that owning an iPhone gave them a 69% chance to correctly infer that the owner was "high-income," which they defined as being in the top quartile of income for households of that type -- like single adult or couple with dependents, for example.

4 of 497 comments (clear)

  1. no individual brand is as predictive... yeah by gyepi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "no individual brand is as predictive of being high-income as owning an Apple iPhone in 2016,"

    Seriously? Owning a Bentley is a worse predictor of being high-income than owning an Apple iPhone? Are we sure there are no further qualifications here?

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    Attitudes make the difference between Space and Time: we want to MAX our temporal, and MIN our spatial extension.
    1. Re:no individual brand is as predictive... yeah by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Seriously? Owning a Bentley is a worse predictor of being high-income than owning an Apple iPhone?

      Yes. I know plenty of people in the top quartile, and none of them own Bentleys.

      If you want to determine if a randomly selected person is in the top 25% by income, asking if they own a Bentley would be a very poor discriminator.

      Top quartile cutoff is $78k. If your household income is above that you are "rich" according to TFA.

      Disclaimer: I am top quartile. I own an iPhone 6 refurb. I do not have a Bentley.

  2. Re:Owning a luxury car (or jet/yatch) is even bett by Gavagai80 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Both iphones and Ferraris sometimes only predict that your parents are high income.

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  3. Re:Owning a luxury car (or jet/yatch) is even bett by Immerman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They're talking about wealth - not income. And thanks to the low class mobility in the U.S., the number one way to become rich is to be born to rich parents.

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