Household income is a measure of the combined incomes of all people sharing a particular

household A household consists of two or more persons who live in the same dwelling. It may be of a single family or another type of person group. The household is the basic unit of analysis in many social, microeconomic and government models, and is im ...

or place of residence. It includes every form of income, e.g.,

salaries A salary is a form of periodic payment from an employer to an employee, which may be specified in an employment contract. It is contrasted with piece wages, where each job, hour or other unit is paid separately, rather than on a periodic basis. ...

and

wages A wage is payment made by an employer to an employee for work done in a specific period of time. Some examples of wage payments include compensatory payments such as ''minimum wage'', ''prevailing wage'', and ''yearly bonuses,'' and remuner ...

, retirement income, near cash government transfers like

food stamps In the United States, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as the Food Stamp Program, is a federal program that provides food-purchasing assistance for low- and no-income people. It is a federal aid program, ad ...

, and

investment Investment is the dedication of money to purchase of an asset to attain an increase in value over a period of time. Investment requires a sacrifice of some present asset, such as time, money, or effort. In finance, the purpose of investing i ...

gains. Average household incomes need not map directly to measures of an individual's earnings such as

per capita income Per capita income (PCI) or total income measures the average income earned per person in a given area (city, region, country, etc.) in a specified year. It is calculated by dividing the area's total income by its total population. Per capita i ...

as numbers of people sharing households and numbers of income earners per household can vary significantly between regions and over time. Average household income can be used as an indicator for the monetary well-being of a country's citizens.

Mean There are several kinds of mean in mathematics, especially in statistics. Each mean serves to summarize a given group of data, often to better understand the overall value (magnitude and sign) of a given data set. For a data set, the ''arithme ...

median In statistics and probability theory, the median is the value separating the higher half from the lower half of a data sample, a population, or a probability distribution. For a data set, it may be thought of as "the middle" value. The basic fe ...

net household income, after

taxes A tax is a compulsory financial charge or some other type of levy imposed on a taxpayer (an individual or legal entity) by a governmental organization in order to fund government spending and various public expenditures (regional, local, or ...

and mandatory contributions, are taken as indicators of

standard of living Standard of living is the level of income, comforts and services available, generally applied to a society or location, rather than to an individual. Standard of living is relevant because it is considered to contribute to an individual's quality ...

, because they include only

disposable income Disposable income is total personal income minus current income taxes. In national accounts definitions, personal income minus personal current taxes equals disposable personal income. Subtracting personal outlays (which includes the major c ...

and acknowledge people sharing accommodation benefit from pooling at least some of their living costs. Median income is the amount that divides the

income distribution In economics, income distribution covers how a country's total GDP is distributed amongst its population. Economic theory and economic policy have long seen income and its distribution as a central concern. Unequal distribution of income causes eco ...

into two equal groups, half having income above that amount, and half having income below that amount. Mean income (

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...

) is the amount obtained by dividing the total aggregate income of a group by the number of units in that group.

Disposable income per capita (OECD)

Mean

The list below represents a national accounts derived indicator for a country or territory's gross household disposable income per capita (including social transfers in kind). According to the

OECD The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; french: Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, ''OCDE'') is an intergovernmental organisation with 38 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate e ...

, 'household disposable income is income available to households such as wages and salaries, income from self-employment and unincorporated enterprises, income from pensions and other social benefits, and income from financial investments (less any payments of tax, social insurance contributions and interest on financial liabilities). 'Gross’ means that depreciation costs are not subtracted.' This indicator also takes account of social transfers in kind 'such as health or education provided for free or at reduced prices by governments and not-for-profit organisations.' The data shown below is published by the OECD and is presented in

purchasing power parity Purchasing power parity (PPP) is the measurement of prices in different countries that uses the prices of specific goods to compare the absolute purchasing power of the countries' currency, currencies. PPP is effectively the ratio of the price of ...

(PPP) in order to adjust for price differences between countries. *Figures have been rounded to the nearest hundred and only countries with data from the past two years are shown.

Median equivalent adult income

The following table represents data from OECD's "median disposable income per person" metric; disposable income deducts from gross income the value of taxes on income and wealth paid and of contributions paid by households to public social security schemes. The figures are equivalised by dividing income by the square root of household size. As OECD displays median disposable incomes in each country's respective currency, the values were converted here using PPP conversion factors for private consumption from the same source, accounting for each country's cost of living in the year that the disposable median income was recorded. Data are in

United States dollar The United States dollar ( symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the officia ...

s at current prices and current

for private consumption for the reference year.

Median Household Net Income (Eurostat)

The following table shows data from Eurostat on household median equivalised net income adjusted for differences in purchasing power between countries. According to Eurostat, 'the total disposable income of a household is calculated by adding together the personal income received by all household members plus income received at household level...Disposable household income includes: All income from work (employee wages and self-employment earnings), private income from investment and property, transfers between households, all social transfers received in cash including old-age pensions.' This indicator does not include non-monetary income components such as the value of goods produced for own consumption, social transfers in kind and non-cash employee income (except company cars). Furthermore, to take account of differences in household sizes, disposable income per household is equivalised. * Data for 2021 not yet available for all countries.

References

External links