Comparing Income Series

I have been working on a graph to show how different US income data series compare to one another. I have plotted 8 income series from 4 different sources, including average and median income. Also I used the CPI-U to adjust each series to 2005 dollars instead of 2002$, 2003$ and 2004$.

Click on the graph to take a closer look:

Data sources for the income series can be found at:

Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) GDP per Employed Person A good stand-in for worker productivity
Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Average Household Includes non-cash income
Census Average Family Income
Census Average Household Income
Census Median Family Income
Census Median Household Income
Saez Average Tax Units with cap gains (Excel file at Emmanuel Saez’s web site)
Saez Average Tax Units without cap gains (Excel file at Emmanuel Saez’s web site)

Some of the differences in these series is due to the unit of measurement:

Family is defined as two or more related people living together
Households include families, singles, non-related people living together.
Tax units are singles, married filling jointly, head of household.

Also over time, family and household sizes have been getting smaller.

If you see a problem with the graph you can post a comment. I plan to refine this graph over the next few weeks.

Addendum:
10/7/2006 Reformatted some of the labels and fixed the y-axis label

[tags]average income, median income, US income, US income distribution[/tags]

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Tagged as: Bureau of Labor Statistics, CIA, Congressional Budget Office, CPI, GDP, Income - Average, Median, Line Graph, Pitketty & Saez, United States, US Census

joan

The Blog economistview has list of the best sources for income data.
Peter Schaeffer

The table is a good one. However, you should have added a line for “Families – Wife Not in Paid Labor Force”. This number rose from $22,028 in 1950 to $42,049 in 1973 and is unchanged ($42,221 in 2004) since. In other words, essentially all gains in family income since 1973 have come from increasing effort (wives working) rather than rising wages/salaries. Given that BLS GDP per worker has soared since 1973, this is quite revealing.

Thank you

Peter Schaeffer
Peter Schaeffer

Was this from an Excel spreadsheet? How did you generate the chart? Excel? Could you please send me a copy of the spreadsheet. Thank you. You have my Email address.
Venkat Venkatasubramanian

Dear Catherine:

Just found your website by chance. Excellent work! Congratulations! It’s a great service you are doing the society.

I am doing research on wage distribution inequalities. Do you know where I can get such data for the US, Europe and Japan? Company specific data would be great, but I suppose that’d be hard to get. Many thanks.

Best,

Venkat
Professor of Chemical Engg, Purdue University
Roy

It would be helpful to have the option to see this graph on a log scale to better show % changes over such a long period of time. The Great Depression doesn’t look so great in this view. Maybe it wasn’t ! but log scale would make that clear. Thanks!