Household income in the United States
economic standard applied to one U.S. household, or aggregated across a community or the nation
Household income is an economic measure of one household's total income. This measure can be aggregated across households for a geographic unit such as county, city, region or country. It is commonly used by the United States government and private institutions to describe a household's economic status or to track economic trends in the US. Household income is often defined as gross (pre-tax) wage income, excluding benefits and transfers from government welfare programs.
A key aggregate is median income, which gives the household income where, within the statistical area, half of households have an income above that value, and the other half of households have an income which falls below. The U.S. Census Bureau reports two median household income estimates based on data from two surveys: the Current Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement and the American Community Survey (ACS). The CPS ASEC is the recommended source for national-level estimates, whereas the ACS gives estimates for many geographic levels. For calendar year 2024, the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement estimated real median household income at $83,730, not statistically different from the 2023 estimate of $82,690. Estimates for previous years are given in terms of real income, which have been adjusted for changes to the price of goods and services.
The distribution of U.S. household income has become more unequal since around 1980, with the income share received by the top 1% trending upward from around 10% or less over the 1953–1981 period to over 20% by 2007. Since the end of the Great Recession, income inequality in the US has gone down slightly, and at an accelerated pace since 2019.
“Household income in the United States” enters the record as economic standard applied to one U.S. household, or aggregated across a community or the nation. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Household, income and United can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3250811. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2024, 2023, 1980 and 1953.
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This entry incorporates text from “Household income in the United States” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.