The median income is the income amount that divides a population into two equally-sized groups, half having an income above that amount, and half having an income below that amount. It may differ from the mean (or average) income. Both of these are ways of understanding income distribution.

Median income can be calculated by household income, by personal income, or for specific demographic groups.

The measurement of income from individuals and households, which is necessary to produce statistics such as the median, can pose challenges and yield results inconsistent with aggregate national accounts data. For example, an academic study on the Census income data claims that when correcting for underreporting, U.S. median gross household income was 15% higher in 2010 (table 3).[1]

Median equivalised income

See also: Equivalisation and Disposable household and per capita income § Median equivalised disposable income

Household incomes are sometimes adjusted by a factor that takes into account household size (and possibly composition). In that case, the adjusted, or "equivalised," income is assigned to each member of the household before statistics such as the median are computed at the individual level.[2][3]

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.[4] 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.[5] Data are in United States dollars at current prices and current purchasing power parity for private consumption for the reference year.

Country Median income
(US$, PPP) 		Year
1  Luxembourg 47,568 2020
2  United States 46,625 2021
3  Norway 41,621 2021
4   Switzerland 39,264 2019
5  Canada 38,582 2020
6  Austria 36,992 2020
7  Netherlands 35,891 2021
8  Australia 35,518 2020
9  Belgium 35,153 2020
10  Iceland 34,316 2017
11  Denmark 33,569 2019
12  Sweden 33,472 2021
13  Germany 33,288 2019
14  New Zealand 31,752 2020
15  Ireland 30,818 2020
16  Finland 30,727 2021
17  South Korea 30,526 2020
18  France 29,131 2019
19  Slovenia 27,519 2020
20  Italy 26,713 2020
21  United Kingdom 25,383 2020
22  Spain 25,288 2020
23  Estonia 23,660 2020
24  Poland 21,904 2020
25  Japan 21,694 2018
26  Czech Republic 21,063 2020
27  Lithuania 21,034 2020
28  Israel 20,833 2020
29  Portugal 19,347 2020
30  Latvia 18,665 2020
31  Croatia 18,607 2020
32  Hungary 17,584 2020
33  Slovak Republic 16,409 2020
34  Russia 16,163 2017
35  Romania 15,897 2020
36  Greece 15,501 2020
37  Bulgaria 14,661 2020
38  Turkey 11,242 2019
39  Chile 10,058 2020
40  Costa Rica 8,915 2021
41  Brazil 6,942 2020
42  Mexico 5,930 2020
43  South Africa 5,489 2020
44  China 4,484 2021
45  India 2,473 2021

See also

References

  1. ^ Fixler, Dennis; Johnson, David S. (September 30, 2012). Accounting for the Distribution of Income in the U.S. National Accounts (PDF). NBER Conference on Research in Income and Wealth. Archived from the original (PDF) on January 22, 2020.
  2. ^ "Terms of Reference, OECD Project on the Distribution of Household Incomes" (PDF). July 2017. Retrieved 6 January 2024.
  3. ^ "Glossary: Equivalised disposable income". Retrieved 6 January 2024.
  4. ^ Income Distribution Database OECD June 2023, retrieved 1 September 2023
  5. ^ "Income Distribution Database".
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