In-kind 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 (e.g. the second). An increase in this ratio signals a widening gap between average and poor households, i.e. higher inequality at the bottom. The top inequality is measured as the ratio between average income in one top decile (e.g. the eighth) and overall average income, and therefore informs about the gap between rich and average households.