Median income

The median income is the income amount that divides a population into two 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]

When taxes and mandatory contributions are subtracted from income, the result is called net or disposable income.

Median equivalised disposable income

The median equivalised disposable income is the median of the disposable income which is equivalised by dividing income by the square root of household size; the square root is used to acknowledge that people sharing accommodation benefit from pooling at least some of their living costs.^[3]^[4] The median equivalised disposable income for individual countries corrected for purchasing power parity (PPP) for 2021 in United States dollars is shown in below table.^[2]

	Country	Median equivalised disposable income (US$, PPP)
1	Luxembourg	49,748
2	United States	48,625
3	Norway	41,621
4	Switzerland	39,698
5	Canada	39,388
6	Austria	37,715
7	Belgium	37,110
8	Iceland	36,853
9	Australia	36,835
10	Netherlands	35,891
11	Germany	35,537
12	Denmark	34,061
13	Sweden	33,472
14	New Zealand	32,158
15	South Korea	31,882
16	Ireland	31,392
17	Finland	30,727
18	France	30,622
19	Slovenia	28,698
20	Italy	27,949
21	United Kingdom	26,884
22	Spain	26,630
23	Estonia	26,075
24	Poland	24,264
25	Czech Republic	23,802
26	Israel	21,366
27	Japan	21,282
28	Lithuania	20,856
29	Latvia	19,908
32	Croatia	19,680
31	Portugal	19,147
32	Greece	16,774
33	Slovak Republic	16,410
34	Hungary	15,361
35	Romania	15,898
36	Bulgaria	14,990
37	Turkey	10,341
38	Chile	10,101
39	Costa Rica	8,915
40	Mexico	6,090
41	South Africa	6,068

References

^ 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.
^ ^a ^b OECD (20 June 2024). Society at a Glance 2024: OECD Social Indicators, Figure 4.1 Median income varies by a factor eight across OECD countries. OECD.
^ "Income Distribution Database".
^ "OECD Data Explorer, Income distribution database, Median, Disposable Income".

[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.

[Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income_y148-2] OECD (20 June 2024). Society at a Glance 2024: OECD Social Indicators, Figure 4.1 Median income varies by a factor eight across OECD countries. OECD.

[3] "Income Distribution Database".

[4] "OECD Data Explorer, Income distribution database, Median, Disposable Income".

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v t e Lists of countries by GDP rankings
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Median income

Median equivalised disposable income

See also

References

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