inkind benefits and consumption taxes however are excluded as the underlying income surveys do not provide this information the bottom inequality in a country is obtained as the ratio between overall average income and average income of one bottom decile eg the second an increase in this ratio signals a widening gap between average and poor households ie higher inequality at the bottom the top inequality is measured as the ratio between average income in one top decile eg the eighth and overall average income and therefore informs about the gap between rich and average households