Merritt has added a new demographic field to the database, the Gini Index. The Gini Index is a measure of inequality in the distribution of household income that was developed by Italian statistician Corrado Gini. According to the American Community Survey and Puerto Rico Community Survey 2012 Subject Definitions, "The Gini ranges from zero (perfect equality) to one (perfect inequality), and it is calculated by measuring the difference between a diagonal line (the purely proportionate distribution) and the distribution of actual values (a Lorenz curve)." Therefore, an index of zero would indicate perfect equality where all the households have the same income spread. An index of one would indicate perfect inequality, where one household has all the income.
This information is gathered from the American Community Survey (ACS) released by the U.S. Census Bureau. The Gini Index fields can be found in CreditScope under the Census Bureau within Underlying Demographic Data for all geographies.
If you are not seeing this information in your CreditScope, please check the date of your most recent software system update by clicking on the [Help] button on the top menu bar of your screen. Then, click on the "About CreditScope" option. In the resulting pop-up box, check the line that reads: "Invest.exe date." In order to see this new information, this date needs to be 04/08/2014 or later. If your "Invest.exe date" does not appear to be current, please consult with someone in your IT department to inquire about scheduling more frequent software system updates.