Talk:Household income in the United States

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Household income in the United States was one of the Social sciences and society good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
August 7, 2006	Good article nominee	Listed
August 20, 2006	Featured article candidate	Not promoted
October 15, 2009	Good article reassessment	Delisted

Current status: Delisted good article

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Old data

This data is old. It is 2013 but many of the tables have the newest year as 2009. Get some new data. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.196.198.36 (talk) 14:34, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I just updated the main table at the top of the page with the latest data. If you have newer data, please place a reference here and make the update yourself. Jcloudm (talk) 14:39, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Net or gross income?

Is the statistic in section 1 by the US Census Bureau, 2005, the before- or after-tax income of the households? Thank you for the clarification in advance! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.75.60.13 (talk) 19:38, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In the opening section, second paragraph, median income is defined in terms of annual income. By comparison, in that same paragraph, extreme poverty is defined, in terms of dollars per day. This makes it difficult to make a comparison between median income and poverty, because they are not explained in terms of directly comparable measures. Dylan k (talk) 04:28, 19 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Dollars per day (2) before government benefits is not the same as $730/year ($2 times 365) because of the government benefit value which almost always kicks in at that level several times over that amount, but also because such levels are usually temporary, often not lasting a full year's time. Neo Poz (talk) 12:18, 19 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

International comparison

The section was grossly misleading. It said that median household in the U.S. was "lower than that of Switzerland." "That of" implies that the comparison is being made between median incomes in the U,S. and median incomes in Switzerland. The Switzerland data are means, not medians, therefore such comparisons are invalid, or they should be redacted with extreme caution so as to not create confusion. In my estimation, mean U.S. household incomes right now exceed those of Switzerland, so not only is the comparison invalid, it might actually be misleading. I say that we revamp that section altogether and compare apples with apples, but in the meantime I edited it a little so as to not lead the incautious reader to think that what's being said is that median household incomes in Switzerland are higher than those in the U.S., which the sources provided do not support.

Thanks and I'd appreciate some feedback before changes are reverted, if anyone considers they must be.--AndresTM (talk) 08:36, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

2010 Update

The census and other data are certainly available by now. Should either add a section summarizing trend since then or make this the 2005-6 article and redo all the data for now. The nature of the trend is well enough known. Lycurgus (talk) 04:54, 26 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Number of earners/work experience

Two of the demographic characteristics collected by the census bureau are not represented at all on this page, and they are fairly significant ones. The Census Bureau data note the number of earners in the household (none, 1, 2, 3, 4) and breaks this down by quintile (and the top 5%); they also note the work experience of the head of household (how many weeks the Head of Household works, and whether this is full-time or part-time work). Both of these factors play prominent roles in income distribution, and really ought to be added to the page. As I have never edited this page, I do not know how contentious edits to this page become, but in addition to updating the data to the most recent available, the two characteristics I mentioned should be added. Horologium (talk) 17:52, 2 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Year confusion?

It seems like some of the numbers here (I'm looking specifically in the "Household income over time" section) just don't line up. For instance, there are several different claims of what the median US income is or was. I suspect that it's because they're from different years, or because they're expressed in different years' dollar amounts - does anyone know? I know that getting this updated every year would be a pain, but having contradictory information is also a pain. It would be awesome to have a source/reference that automatically updates the numbers. 18.38.2.39 (talk) 17:52, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Overall, the United States followed the trend of other developed nations with a relatively large population of relatively affluent households outnumbering the poor." The use of multiple "relatively"s here makes this statement almost worthless.

"Among those in between the extremes of the income strata are a large number of households with moderately high middle class incomes[9] and an even larger number of households with moderately low incomes.[6]" Following the first quoted sentence with this one is not clearing anything up. Which extremes? Are they relative extremes? In what way does moderately low incomes outnumbering moderately high incomes support the previous sentence that there is a "relatively" large population of "relatively" affluent households? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.58.246.125 (talk) 14:24, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Apparent Error in Map

The map of 2009 median incomes by county shows a pocket of high income in NE Wyoming. That is Campbell County, WY. It is shown in a darker color than Washington County, OR. But the individual Wikipedia pages for the two counties state that Washington County's median income is higher than Campbell County's. This relationship holds for both "household" and "family" median incomes. In addition, Washington Country, OR is not shown in the darkest map color. Campbell County is being shown in the same "bucket" with very high-income areas like Marin County, CA. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.115.88.202 (talk) 18:34, 6 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Editing to reduce information available!?

I have paid attention to this page since 2008, and the data has been progressively edited to obscure the changes in income distrobution that have taken place over the last 50 years.

There used to be a graph showing changes to income distribution from 1967 to 2007, and now it only shows 1967 to 2003, with data points scaled and averaged to make it look like al levels have been gradually increasing at similar rates, which is absurd.

The main chart showing the percentile distribution of incomes also used to include details for something like $100,000-$350,000; $350,000-$1,000,000; and over $1,000,000. Now everything over 100,000 is lumped into one giant category, masking the problem with income distribution in America. It is pretty sickening, to be honest. 38.96.130.98 (talk) 22:58, 5 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, when I initially wrote this (most of it is still the original from what I can tell) not obscuring hard to see information/trends is something I set out to avoid, especially the useless lumping of all $100k+ households together. Hopefully other editors or I, when I get the time, will add some of the nuance back in. Signature^brendel 09:10, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Mean income table problem

~~Right now, if one attempts to sort by state, the definition of mean income gets included in the sorting. I'm no expert in fixing tables, so could we get someone who is to fix it?~~ Fixed - there was an open table delimiter or whatever it's called.--Vidkun (talk) 19:58, 14 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Data Sources -

There are a couple of links that are excellent and non-partisan however I am uncertain as to the copyright use. http://stateofworkingamerica.org/who-gains/#/?start=1969&end=2008 This is an excellent dynamic measure that can be applied across any particular time scale. The linked measure notes that from 1969 to 2008 the average income adjusted for inflation declined, despite a total average income increase of $11,000 per person that went entirely to the top 10% and mostly to the top 1%.

Gapminder World and Gapminder USA provide excellent data over time based on state or country with excellent measures of up to four perimeters at a time, an a wide set of comparisons.Dragonwlkr (talk) 15:14, 22 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

RE: copyright issues. Census Bureau data is always up for grabs since it's government work. The rest is done standard academic style. Updating and neutral tone are different issues. Always intended to get back to this article, hopefully will at some point. Signature^brendel 09:06, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

WSJ link is dead

After "In 2005 MBA's who got offers were expected to receive $85k" the WSJ link points to a generic category page rather than to a specific article.

Crasshopper (talk) 19:21, 8 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Census reference for Household income table is broken

The reference for the first table does not appear to go anywhere, and the data appears stale compared to the latest income data. Tables HINC-01 and HINC-06 at http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstables/032012/hhinc/toc.htm show different data that totals to more than 8M additional households, compared to the data in the article currently. I propose updating the table to reflect the official Census data. Jcloudm (talk) 20:03, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I agree; please do it. EllenCT (talk) 20:36, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This was done two days ago. Jcloudm (talk) 14:40, 27 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Misleading Graphic for Median Income by year

Is it just me or does the seemingly random start date for the graph for median income seem not so random but rather deceptively conceived and graphed to show a precipitous drop? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Median_US_household_income.png is the graphic I'm referring to. The data for such a graph goes back to 1967 ( http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/household/ ), why start at 2000? Jasendorf (talk) 14:37, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm totally comfortable with a new graph going back to 1967. Can you make one? Jcloudm (talk) 15:53, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

On it. Jasendorf (talk) 18:03, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

How about this? http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Median_US_Household_Income_1967-2011.png — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jasendorf (talk • contribs) 19:19, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Is there an issue with the table and the graphs in Household Income section?

I am looking at the table and the graph on the right that shows percentages of income distribution and they don't add up. For instance, in the graph it says $25K or less constitutes 28% of the households. But the table shows $25-30K as 25%. There is a 3% gap. Moreover, the $75-100K and over $100K total is 28% in the graph, but it adds up to 33% in the table. Am I missing something?