[lbo-talk] $2,150 Per Family and Counting

snitilicious at tampabay.rr.com snitilicious at tampabay.rr.com
Sun Apr 18 11:56:06 PDT 2004


At 02:33 PM 4/18/2004, John Thornton wrote:


> Am I out of touch with reality on this? $60,000 for "typical" family and
> then $7000 for the student income. Doesn't this leave out most people in
> the U.S.? These statistics make it look like low incomes are for college
> students and then POW you get out of school and start making $60,000. I
> guess that means non-college educated folks start right out at $60,000 in
> their high paying union factory jobs. Or is that two incomes at $30,000
> each (Mom and Dad both working you know) in non-union factory jobs? Am I
> being overly sensitive for being pissed off by this characterization of
> U.S. incomes or is this pretty close to the truth despite what I think I know?
>
>John Thornton

Author's probably using the MEDIAN Family Income stats as opposed to Median Household Income. Median means half below, half above. Median household income (can include things like unrelated retirees sharing an apt, trailer, or house; unrelated students sharing apt or house) is usually lower than median family income.

http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/4person.html

http://www.usc.edu/schools/sppd/research/casden/research/data_folder/us_fainco.pdf

here's a table with both median and mean: http://www.census.gov/acs/www/Products/Profiles/Single/2000/C2SS/Tabular/010/01000US3.htm

family = http://www.statcan.ca/english/census2001/dict/fam003.htm

household income = http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/meta/long_71061.htm by state = http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/income02/statemhi.html

IIRC, they use median (not mean) because the mean can fail to represent the "typical" when a few incomes are really low or, as the case in the u.s., a few incomes are extraordinarily high. You can see this is the third link, above.

Kelley



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