Research reveals owning iPhone indicates you’re rich

Apple is known for its expensive range of products and a new research has revealed that owning an iPhone or an iPad is an indication of being rich.

Two economists from the University of Chicago published a paper titled ‘National Bureau of Economic Research’ that states signs of detecting rich people. The findings show that people owning Apple iPhone or iPad are likely to be rich.

The researchers wrote, “Across all years in our data, no individual brand is as predictive of being high-income as owning an Apple iPhone in 2016.”

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Conducting the research in the US market, the researchers discovered that owning an iPhone gave people a 69% chance to accurately conclude that the owner was ‘high-income’ (the top-quarter of the total). Numerous iPhone generations were taken into account along with other products including favorite brands, magazines etc., wrote Business Insider.

Survey data of 2016 from ‘Mediamark Research Intelligence’ was used, having a sample size of 6,394. The data included bi-annual questionnaires and also data such as household income from an in-person interview.

As per Gizmodo, the iPhone was picked out in particular was because Android devices have a vast price range from high to low because of which Android owners cannot be classified as ‘rich’. iPhones, on the other hand, have usually higher price range with competing smartphones, which is affordable for selected individuals, for example the expensive iPhone X.

The paper was aimed to look at how various groups like rich and poor, men and women, black and white, have had their preferences deviate with time. Then, with the help of a machine learning algorithm, researchers concluded the cultural differences, or how common brands and experiences are across different groups, aren’t increasing with time.

The report also indicated other factors for determining the wealth of people. For instance, having Bluetooth with heated/cooled car seats was also an indication of wealth back in 2016.