Re: Median income higher than in 1985
On Oct 21, 2006, at 9:42 PM, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
“As the U.S. population crossed the 300 million mark sometime around 7:46 a.m. Tuesday (according to the U.S. Census Bureau), the typical family is doing a whole lot better than their grandparents were in 1967, the year the population first surpassed 200 million.
Mr. and Mrs. Median’s $46,326 in annual income is 32% more than their mid-’60s counterparts, even when adjusted for inflation, and 13% more than those at the median in the economic boom year of 1985. And thanks to ballooning real estate values, average household net worth has increased even faster. The typical American household has a net worth of $465,970, up 83% from 1965, 60% from 1985 and 35% from 1995. “
more at
http://biz.yahoo.com/weekend/avg_1.html
Any comments? Doug?
Grandparents in 1967? Generations are now 20 years?
In any case, here’s the history on annual growth in real median
family income (I’d rather use hoousehold, but those numbers don’t
begin until 1967):
1950s 3.25%
1960s 3.19%
1970s 0.94%
1980s 0.82%
1990s 1.17%
2000s -0.36%
1947-73 2.78%
1973-2005 0.65%
So while the median growth numbers are positive in recent decades,
they’re a lot less positive than they were in the Golden Age.
“Average net worth” of this sort is a meaningless figure. If these
numbers come from taking aggregate figures from the flow of funds and
dividing them by the number of households to get a mean, you actually
get something resembling the household at the 95th percentile. And
net worth in the middle ranks is mostly the house; nonresidential net
worth is fairly trivial at all except the top levels. According to
the Fed’s 2004 Survey of Consumer Finances, net worth at the 50th
percentile was $92,900 (which includes the principal residence) - a
fraction of this story’s fanciful $465,970.
Doug