Different Views Of Monthly Median Household Income

As promised, we're comparing Political Calculations estimates of median household income in the United States with those of our competition!

Pexels

In the private sector, that competition is represented by Sentier Research, which produced monthly estimates of median household income from December 2000 through December 2019 utilizing a methodology the firm's former Census Bureau analysts' developed using data from the U.S. Census Bureau's monthly Current Population Survey. In the public sector, the competition is the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, whose analysts project their own estimates from the Census Bureau's one-year estimates of median household income from the American Community Survey, where their estimates start in January 2006.

The following chart visualizes all three data series from January 2006 through December 2021, which covers nearly all the period where they overlap.

As you can see, all these estimates range within a few percent of each other from January 2006 through October 2018. After that point, there's a major divergence between the Atlanta Fed's estimates and the others, where we note the following three differences:

1. The Atlanta Fed's estimates understate the rising trend for median household income observed in 2019.
2. They also completely miss the impact and recovery from the coronavirus recession in 2020.
3. They significantly understate the robust growth in median household income we've observed since March 2021.

Political Calculations' estimates of median household income generally tracks with Sentier Research's estimates up through the period where they terminate in December 2019. The analysts who founded Sentier Research after retiring from the U.S. Census Bureau went on to permanently retire in 2020. Sentier Research is no longer an operating entity.

The reference section below will take you to each source, including our most recent update that contains direct links to our source data and indicates the methodology we've used to create our estimates of median household income. If you're reading this article on our site, following the median household income label will take you to the latest posts where we've either presented or used the estimates we've generated in our various analyses.

References

Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Home Ownership Affordability Monitor (U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey One-Year Estimates of Median Household Income, Projected to Indicated Month by Atlanta Fed Staff using additional data produced by the Current Population Survey and Decennial Census). [Online Database]. Accessed 20 March 2022.

Sentier Research. Household Income Trends: January 2000 through December 2019.  [Excel Spreadsheet with Nominal Median Household Incomes for January 2000 through January 2013 courtesy of Doug Short]. [PDF Document]. Accessed 6 February 2020. [Note: We've converted all data to be in terms of current (nominal) U.S. dollars.] Note: Sentier Research is no longer an operating entity, we've linked to the Internet Archive's copy of this final report.

Political Calculations. Median Household Income in January 2022. [Online Article]. 1 March 2022.