For each income band, compare the response distribution within the two gender groups. The table below combines agree and strongly agree only to make one comparable contrast visible. The Pearson chi-squared statistic and its p-value still use all five original response categories, with four statistical degrees of freedom in every band. Income labels are thousands of USD per year; finite upper bounds are excluded.
Income bandMale agreementFemale agreementDifference in percentage pointsCramér's V
Under 10k11738.64%34.25%4.393.4330.48810.171
10k–20k21235.90%35.07%0.825.4570.24350.160
20k–30k24552.17%39.22%12.965.8930.20730.155
30k–40k27854.90%37.50%17.4010.1170.038510.191
40k–50k17854.74%38.55%16.186.6870.15340.194
50k and above110571.16%50.21%20.9563.7650.240
In the lowest-income band, combined agreement differs by only about percentage points. The full distributions still differ descriptively: strong disagreement is in the male group and in the female group. The omnibus Pearson chi-squared test does not reject independence at 5%, but that decision does not prove equal distributions.
In the 10k–20k band, combined agreement is almost the same. Nevertheless, strong agreement is higher in the female group, versus , while the less intense agreement category is higher in the male group, versus . Collapsing the categories hides that distinction. The full-distribution p-value is approximately .
In the 20k–30k band, combined agreement is higher in the male group by about percentage points. Strong agreement alone is versus . The observed difference is therefore larger than in the two lowest bands, despite its full-table p-value remaining above 5%.
In the 30k–40k band, combined agreement differs by about percentage points, with fewer male neutral responses, versus . The full-table p-value of is nominally significant at 5%. In the 40k–50k band, the combined agreement gap is a similar percentage points, but the full-table p-value is . These labels are not a direct comparison between the two effects: significant and nonsignificant results need not differ significantly.
In the highest-income band, strong agreement is in the male group and in the female group. Combined agreement differs by about percentage points. This band has both the largest sample size and the largest Cramér's V of the six tables, with a very small p-value. Its particularly strong evidence reflects both precision and an observed difference in the distribution.
All six minimum expected frequencies exceed five: approximately , , , , and . Thus sparse expected counts do not provide a reason to reject the usual chi-squared distribution approximation here. If the six hypothesis tests form one exploratory family, a Bonferroni correction would use for each test; only the highest-income result crosses that threshold. This qualifies the unadjusted 30k–40k result without turning its observed contrast into zero.
In the elaboration model, the larger agreement gaps in the middle and upper bands provide a descriptive pattern of specification: the conditional contrast varies with income. This is not a Simpson's paradox reversal, because the combined agreement difference has the same sign in every band. Nor is the larger high-income effect size established simply by comparing its p-value with the other p-values. A formal claim of effect modification requires a stated scale and an appropriate comparison of the effects.
The pooled comparison also mixes different income compositions. The highest-income band contains of the male group but of the female group. Average each group's six agreement proportions over the same pooled income weights using standardization with common weights. This gives
The crude difference was percentage points, so common weighting attenuates it by about percentage points but leaves a substantial descriptive contrast. With average-group rather than pooled-person weights, the symmetric decomposition of a stratified mean difference instead gives an exact split into approximately percentage points from conditional contrasts and percentage points from composition. These are different explicitly defined descriptive summaries, not estimates of a causally mediated share.
Figure 1. . Original calculations from the printed aggregate counts. The outcome combines agree and strongly agree; the two gender labels are those recorded in the paper. Error bars are individual approximate 95% Wilson intervals, not simultaneous intervals or a formal test of between-band effect modification. The right panel uses the same pooled income frequencies for both groups. No individual observations were reconstructed. Details.
An antecedent income variable could be considered in a confounding explanation, whereas an income variable on an assumed causal pathway would enter an interpretation through causal mediation. The conditional tables do not distinguish these causal structures. They also do not identify whether any adjustment introduces collider bias. The supported conclusion is income-dependent descriptive association plus a measurable composition difference, with causal interpretation left conditional on additional assumptions.