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income

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Also known as merit, earning

Income is the consumption and saving opportunity gained by an entity within a specified timeframe, which is generally expressed in monetary terms. Income is difficult to define conceptually and the definition may be different across fields. For example, a person's income in an economic sense may be different from their income as defined by law.

AI overview

Income is the money or resources that a person or organization gains during a specific time period, which they can then spend or save. It's an important concept because it determines how much people can consume and save, though its exact meaning can vary depending on whether you're looking at it from an economic perspective or a legal one.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

~14 min read

Encyclopedic overview

22 sections
Contents
  • Economic definitions
  • Full and Haig–Simons income
  • Factor income
  • Legal definitions
  • Definitions under the Internal Revenue Code
  • Definition under US Case law
  • Accounting definitions
  • "Nonincome"
  • Debt
  • Psychic income
  • Income growth
  • Factors contributing to higher income
  • Income inequality
  • National Income
  • Basic income
  • Universal Basic Income
  • Income in philosophy and ethics
  • Income and health
  • History
  • See also
  • References
  • Further reading

Income is the consumption and saving opportunity gained by an entity within a specified timeframe, which is generally expressed in monetary terms. Income is difficult to define conceptually and the definition may be different across fields. For example, a person's income in an economic sense may be different from their income as defined by law.

An extremely important definition of income is Haig–Simons income, which defines income as Consumption + Change in net worth and is widely used in economics.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “income” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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