This is after taxes/transfers, right?

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

Thanks, I've been wondering about that question for a while. The message I draw from that table is that greater levels of equality and social benefits make a significant difference to the absolute standard of living at the bottom, but only up to a point. The first argument I got into on ET, way, way back at its beginnings, was over absolute SOL in Poland vs. the US - with me arguing that on an absolute level, poor people in Poland are poorer than poor people in the US, and that on that same absolute standard, a good, solidly above average income family in Poland lives at an SOL which would be considered quite poor in the US. What it also points to is how much relative poverty matters - the subjective feeling of that upper middle class family in Poland is going to be very different than an impoverished one with the same PPP income in America.