quintile

noun quin·tile \ ˈkwin-ˌtī(-ə)l \

Updated on: 13 Oct 2017

Definition of quintile

:any of the four values that divide the items of a frequency distribution into five classes with each containing one fifth of the total population; also :any one of the five classes

Recent Examples of quintile from the Web

The quintile of workers in jobs most at risk of automation made an average of $38,000 a year.

— tory newmyer, Washington Post, "The Finance 202: Trump sets Wall Street on edge with shutdown threat," 24 Aug. 2017
Of those in that bottom quintile, in part because more women are alone, their numbers are 4.6 million vs. 3.3 million men.

— jon talton, The Seattle Times, "Out of the workforce: Often female, less educated, poor," 17 Aug. 2017
According to a 2015 study by Oxfam and the Lahore University of Management Sciences, 40 percent of the Pakistani children in the lowest economic quintile are expected to remain there for life.

— chicagotribune.com, "Why Pakistan hates Malala," 15 Aug. 2017
Meanwhile, nearly one-quarter of households in the middle quintile of the income ladder would see their tax burdens increase.

— eric levitz, Daily Intelligencer, "Trump’s Tax Plan Would Be Bad for Those Who Don’t Own Yachts, Study Basically Finds," 12 July 2017
Their losses will come even as $700 billion worth of tax breaks also contained in the BCRA largely benefit the top quintile of earners, as an analysis from Howard Gleckman at the Tax Policy Center shows.

— vann r. newkirk ii, The Atlantic, "The Senate's Health-Care Bill Is Still Unaffordable for Poor People," 26 June 2017
Quintiles found that worldwide spending on cancer drugs and supportive medications — such as anti-nausea drugs and blood boosters — grew from $91 billion in 2012 to $113 billion in 2016.

— maggie fox, NBC News, "More New Cancer Drugs Mean Higher Costs But Also Longer Lives," 2 June 2017
Those in the bottom income quintile, meanwhile, would see their taxes actually tick up by $10.

— martha c. white, NBC News, "Billionaire Investor Buffett Says ‘Guys Like Me’ Benefit Most from Trumpcare," 8 May 2017
Many of those under-savers are in the top two income quintiles and shouldn’t be government’s top priority.

— anne tergesen, WSJ, "Is There Really a Retirement-Savings Crisis?," 23 Apr. 2017

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'quintile.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Breaking Down the Meaning of quintile

Many people have a deep interest in statistics about themselves, whether the information provided is about income, ice-cream consumption, or trash production. And any such rating can be divided into fifths, or quintiles. The fifth or lowest quintile would include the 20 percent of the population who make the least money or eat the least ice cream or generate the least trash, and the first quintile would include the 20 percent who make, eat, or generate the most.

Origin and Etymology of quintile

Latin quintus + English ²-ile

NEW! Time Traveler

First Known Use: 1922

See Words from the same year

Financial Definition of QUINTILE

quintile

noun

What It Is

A quintile is one of five equal parts.

How It Works

For example, if we were to look at all of the closing prices for Company XYZ stock for every day in the last year, the top 20% of those prices would represent the upper quintile of the data. The bottom 20% of those prices would represent the lower quintile of the data. There would be three quintiles in between the upper and lower quintiles. The average of all the stock prices typically falls right in the middle, between the second and fourth quintiles.

Why It Matters

Quintiles are crucial for studying economic data, income data, stock data, and virtually any other kind of financial information. By breaking things into quintiles, an analyst can make a variety of inferences about the data and how the observed item behaves.

Source: Investing Answers