Talk:Personal income in the United States/Archives/2013

Not Finished

I just started the article. I also wrote Household income in the United States as well as several other articles pertaining to socio-economics in the US. This article will somewhat resembe the Household income in the US article. It will, however, take me a bit of time to expand this article as I am currently somewhat busy. Thus please remeber that this article will still be expanded further. Regards, Signature^brendelNow under review! 07:20, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Taxed?

When discussing incomes in a US context, are you talking about the gross income (not counting taxes) or the net income (counting taxes)? Wouter Lievens 22:42, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Gross income. Nearly all the statistics used in the US are gross income-very rarely do you ever see net income stats. Regards, Signature^brendelHAPPY HOLIDAYS 23:24, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

More Information

This page could really use some more information on median income over time like the Household Income page has if anyone can find it. I can't. :( AlexMc 17:17, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I am actually also the author of the household income in the US article. I have the same data available for personal income as I do for household income. I just haven't gotten around to adding all that info yet, being on vacation, X-mas shopping, etc... I will in the near future through. Signature^brendelHAPPY HOLIDAYS 04:45, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Median Income at Retirement

I feel it would be helpful if you could include a section with Median Incomes at the point of Retirement. Most people premise their politics based on the assumption of what they will be earning eventually. I may be wrong but for most people maximum income occurs at the point of retirement, and retirement income is less. Of course, some history and reasonable protections for future earnings is important also. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.98.115.94 (talk) 16:19, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Labor force median income

I changed the description of the median income cited at the end of the introduction. It had stated that the median income was for all 233 million people over age 15 (i.e., the labor force). However, the median cited excludes people with no earnings; it only considers the 155,410,000 people with earnings. This can be seen by comparing the first two columns in the reference cited for this median income value. 12.107.7.5 (talk) 23:20, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

True; I should have clarified that when I wrote the article. Signature^brendel 23:23, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Professional degree

What is a professional degree? Why is it between master and doctorate? And isn't it odd that all three of male 25+, household and full-time average salaries are exactly a round 100k$? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zorxd (talk • contribs) 19:42, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Definition

I think the page needs a definition of personal income. What goes into it, and what, if anything, is deducted? BALawrence (talk) 02:46, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

HISTORY of personal income

There should be a graph of real median personal income vs. time for the last 90+ years. Adjusted for inflation, of course. Jwray (talk) 03:42, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

We definitely need an update through 2009. The data here ends in 2004. However, there isn't much US data available prior to about 1930, when the Federal Government started collecting statistics.+

Yes indeed; also we need a visual - graphs are commonly used...showing at least as far back as 1930s, and yes, going until at least as recently as 2009, in inflation-adjusted dollars. Many decades of growth in real (after inflation) wages, while last 3 or so decades mostly stagnant, the graphs seem to indicate. Either way, let's get ahold of such data and include it prominently - it's one of the large factors in today's economy --Harel (talk) 02:11, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Possibly useful: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/youthindicators/Indicators.asp?PubPageNumber=32

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/youthindicators/Images/32.gif

List vs Prose

My feeling is that the little warning box at the top should be removed. This page accomplishes way more than would ever be possible in prose. We should leave it in the current format and be happy to do so. Ranatoro (talk) 01:49, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I concur - if the next person who sees this agrees they should probably delete it. Jethro 82 (talk) 18:49, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

I wasn't the one who put the box up, but I disagree with you two. Our readers need more than just the data. We should be able to provide prose on the overall trends/meanings of the data instead of just throwing a few tables up. There is a lot of study/research done on this topic and I'm sure there is more to say about it. johnpseudo 19:08, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

The $100k+ Realm

The article is fascinating, but lumps the entire set of over $100k earners together. While yes, they do represent a fairly small portion of the population, there is some really amazing data there. Even expanding to include the $100k-200k set would include ~75% of the >$100k earners. There are over 18k people in the US who earn over $10m a year, which is pretty spectacular. Beyond that, they average $30m! Together, they earn almost 1/25th of the US' GDP!

Any objections to expansion of the article? Divinus (talk) 05:50, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

The reason the article stops at 100k is because that's where the census data stops. I'm for the expansion if there is actual data to support it. johnpseudo 15:42, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

The census data is good, but limited in this respect. The IRS reports a wider range of statistics based on income tax returns, but its limitations are threefold: It only reports information on income earners that file taxes; its quantitative description is return rather than individual, so it refers more to an income unit (ie, single earner family, double earner family filing jointly, singles) closest to the census' "household" category; and it reports Adjusted Gross Income, which doesn't include above the line deductions. Still, the information is wildly useful if these considerations are presented correctly and are more accurate than census data.Divinus (talk) 12:33, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Income by Race

The sources used to state that Asian-Americans have the highest median personal income lack the content that would verify this to be true. A much better source regarding differences in income by race would be "Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2008" This article actually makes it clear that the per capita income of Asian-Americans is lower than non-Hispanic Whites. Having already come across several Wikipedia entries that are similar to a fault just in last few weeks I seriously believe there should be a more conscientious effort to make use of proper citations. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Balisong5 (talk • contribs) 03:44, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

I guess there's a difference between per capita and median personal income and although non hispanic whites have a higher per capita income Asian Americans have a slightly higher median personal income. Even then, the 2008 data compiled by the U.S Census Bureau for personal median income by race should be cited in the article as the gap has narrowed quite a bit between non Hispanic White-Americans and Asian-Americans since 2006. The name of this article is titled "Personal income in the United States" and therefore personal income should be measured not solely by median statistics but per capita statistics as well. The article "Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United State:2008" states "The per capita income for the overall population in 2008 was $26,964; for non-Hispanic Whites, it was $31,313; for Blacks, it was $18,406; for Asians, it was $30,292; and for Hispanics, it was $15,674" I admit that I wasn't precisely correct in my earlier edit but at the same time the information just mentioned shouldn't be overlooked either. Finally, I strongly suggest that the main article for this entry be updated to reflect the stats for 2008 as there have been changes since 2006. --Balisong5 (talk) 20:52, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Great article

Why doesn't an article like this exist for other countries? Most wikis have an article comparable to this however lacking mostly in quality. It would be great to see this article ( english wikipedia ) extended to other countries. --134.2.3.196 (talk) 14:14, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Question

While this has all sorts of information about how much people earn, one question I've got is what exactly is in the DoC's definition of income? Is this before or after income tax and other such things? It'd seem to me that this would be a very important distinction to note in a clear and concise form for the reader. - Anon —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.110.204.27 (talk) 02:37, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

This data is outdated.

This data is from 2006. 75.41.221.164 (talk) 15:17, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

dead links for citations

"http://pubdb3.census.gov/macro/032006/perinc/new02_067.htm" and others just lead to dead links. These publications seem to be the basis for this article, so it's odd that the links to them don't work. SmallEditsForLife (talk) 18:45, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

2088

in re "...for the 2080 hours in a typical work year..."; the actual number of hours is 2088, and 2096 in leap years. Side note: the federal government uses 2087 for budgeting purposes. •Jim62sch•^dissera! 06:05, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Apparent discrepancy regarding 90% income rank

According to http: // elsa.berkeley.edu / ~saez / saez-UStopincomes-2012.pdf The 90% individual-income (including capital gains) rank for 2012 was at $114,000.

According to this article the 90% rank for 2010 is within $82,500 to $85,000 range.

Did income at 90% rank really go up so much from 2010 to 2012, or is the discrepancy because this page doesn't include capital gains while the other does, or is one or the other incorrect information, or is there some other explanation? 66.81.212.175 (talk) 03:37, 18 November 2013 (UTC) Twitter.Com/CalRobert (Robert Maas)