Forgetting the margin of error
The Herald reports:
Big earners are lining up for the Government’s home insulation subsidy, a survey suggests, prompting fears middle income earners will miss out unless the scheme gets more Government money.
An online survey of 1578 homeowners found high earners were twice as likely to want to take advantage of floor and ceiling insulation subsidies under which home owners must pay up to $3500 themselves.
That sounds about right to me. Must untargeted schemes have higher income earners take more advantage of them. This is why I tend to support targeting over universal provision, and why stuff like tax incentives for health insurance tends not to increase the number of people who have health insurance.
The $323 million scheme gives grants of up to $1300 to insulate floors and ceilings in homes built before 2000, and $500 towards a heat pump or other energy-efficient home heating.
The poll suggests about 280,000 home owners may apply – pushing demand well above the four-year target of insulating and improving heating in 180,000 homes.
This is quite possible, but I would be cautious about that figure. The poll is done by the NZ Business Council for Sustainable Development and I suspect those who respond to their polls (done through an online sample, not random phone polling) are far more environmentally aware than the average home owner, and hence more likely to say they are interested in such a scheme.
Homeowners making more than $200,000 a year made up only 1 per cent of respondents, but 45 per cent of them planned to get help with home insulation costs, as did 35 per cent of those making $70,000 to $100,000 and 29 per cent of those on $100,000 and $150,000.
I can not believe they are quoting results for homeowners making more than $200k a year. By their own admission that is 1% of respondents or 16 people. So that figure of 45% has a margin of error of 25.8%.
Those other figures quoted may have very high margin of errors also. Normally I would check the source report but it doesn’t appear to be online yet.
September 15th, 2009 at 6:40 am
The polls by the NZBCSD seem mighty shonky to me. KiwiPolitico‘s Anita once summed up their methodology like this:
1) Get a potentially representative sample of the population
2) Allow people to add themselves to the sample, by advertising for participants on a website with a political slant
3) Sample your sample
4) Make sure that sample of a sample (which is a sample plus opt-in) is also opt-in.
5) Adjust for some possibly relevant demographic things
6) Produce numbers
7) Publish with pride
That said, you’re a pollster and I’m not: by all means correct me if I’m wrong or being unfair.
[DPF: I don't think that is incorrect. One can do Internet based polling accurately. YouGov in the UK have an excellent record of accuracy. But the problem I see with the NZBCSD polls are that because the vast majority of their polls are on environmental issues, their sample population over time becomes unrepresentative. They try hard to remedy this with demographic weighting, but even then I think it leaves questions.
What would be interesting is to replicate one of their polls by way of random phone survey and compare the results. In fact if I was to move into Internet based polling (which over time may be inevitable) I would regularly test my results against the more proven phone polling]
September 15th, 2009 at 7:18 am
Assuming the 16 respondents a) actually had household incomes > 200k b) weren’t Labour or Green activists
September 15th, 2009 at 7:54 am
NEWSFLASH: Bad government policy has unintended results. Economy suffers as middle class taxed to provide money to middle class.
September 15th, 2009 at 8:40 am
Disagree with you on health insurance. People on high incomes can self insure but if there is a tax benefit they will take it up. But there is really no point to that in terms of public policy. The people who need health insurance are the people who cannot find $5-10,000 at short notice to deal with some health problem. The big stuff is covered anyway by the public health system.
September 15th, 2009 at 9:14 am
My understanding is that you can only get the subsidy on installation. This means that only people who can afford to pay for someone to come and install the stuff will get any benefit. If I want to save money and crawl under my floor myself I’m left out in the cold.
September 15th, 2009 at 10:25 am
My understanding is that you can only get the subsidy on installation.
My understanding is that you are wrong.
September 15th, 2009 at 10:52 am
This is a bit off topic, but — how reliable is phone polling these days? I don’t have stats for this, but it seems to me that cellphones and VOIP could be causing a decline in landline ownership, and that landline owners will be increasingly skewed towards older, poorer, or those disinclined to new technology.
[DPF: At this stage the impact is marginal, and one can set demographic targets to compensate]
September 15th, 2009 at 11:12 am
“how reliable is phone polling these days? ”
Also skewed towards those who are home more often, and to those who can be bothered responding.
I am rarely at home on weekdays but I had a day off last week and had a call from someone wanting to do a poll on “social issues”. I don’t usually do polls but this time as I had free time I decided to try it. First question – what age band are you in. I had to wait for a few before I could point out where I was – and she said they already had their quota of that age, so that was that.
September 15th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Lyndon, either you have misunderstood me or you are being an idiot. You only get the subsidy if an approved installer comes and puts the stuff in for you. You also have to get both floor and ceiling done if it’s possible. It’s quite likely that the installation costs will be more than the $1300 subsidy so that is of no use to people who are able to install it themselves but will struggle to afford the insulation itself. I can get a subsidy if I want to pay someone else to do it but not if I want to do it myself.
The following is from the energywise website:
Can I install insulation/heating myself and still get funding?
No, funding can only be granted where EECA approved installers are carrying out the work. This is to ensure the products are installed in a safe and effective manner.
September 15th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
Philonz is essentially correct even though his initial statement was poorly stated.
You can only get a subsidy on professionally installed insulation….. the subsidy isnt stated as being on the labour… but it effectively is for many people. An average 3 or 4 bedroom home needing both under-floor and ceiling insulation will frequently cost you less to buy the stuff and fit it yourself than it will to get professionally installed with subsidy.
September 16th, 2009 at 12:19 am
It is yet another crap system implemented by EECA, a classic example of a bureaucracy that is incredibly inefficient and provides minimal benefit for the hundreds of millions it costs us. Why?
Do you remember their scheme to subsidise solar hot water systems? National got up in the House and took the piss out of Labour because no one had taken advantage of the paltry $500 on offer over a 2 year period! (though they had no idea why) The reason was that it was impossible to qualify for!! They had a list of preferred systems and suppliers and a set amount that each particular system had to be installed for before you qualified. Nobody could supply and install the system for the rates on EECA’s table. I know, I spent a couple of weeks trying to fight my way through the crap.
This insulation system is almost as crap, again because they have preferred suppliers and installers. The system is open to abuse and regularly is. Many of the suppliers load the price because they know it is subsidised. The problem is worst in smaller towns where there may only be one supplier. I know of one example, Wanganui. A friend got a price from the local approved outfit who were more expensive than a firm who had to travel from 100kms away to do the job.
Why can’t we do it like the Aussies do? They pay $8000 towards solar systems (that work in conjunction with the normal house system). You go to the website, get the specifications, do the job whatever way you can. When it is completed you apply for the grant and it is paid only after it is inspected by a qualified person. Isn’t that more efficient?
This country is riddled with fucking bureaucrats and their stupid bureaucratic systems.
September 16th, 2009 at 6:12 am
The country is also riddled with rotters and cowboys. A couple of points I can think of:
- the quality of the insulation is dependent on how well it is installed
- if the purchase of materials only was subsidised it is difficult to control whether it is put to proper use in qualifying houses (or onsold for a profit etc)
I had my house checked last week and am waiting for the quote. Probably get a second quote, and compare them with DIY. If the subsidy approximately covers the cost of installing it I’ll be happy, saves me having to do it and it’s more likely to be a better job.