Hi. I am Mary Leisenring.
Did you know that median household income for the nation decreased 2.9% from 2019 to 2020?
Every year, the Census Bureau releases the income and poverty report that provides statistics from the Current Population Survey
Annual Social and Economic Supplement, or CPS ASEC for short.
In this Data Gem, I will teach you how to access income data tables from the CPS ASEC for the nation,
and we will also discuss how and where you can find data at the state level.
Let me show you how to get there.
To locate income data tables, let’s begin at Census.gov.
At the top, hover over “Browse by Topic”.
Click on “Income & Poverty” and then select “Income”.
On the left menu of the Income page, click on “Data”.
The Income Data page has links to income data tables, data tools, and datasets.
In this Data Gem, we are focusing on the Income Data Tables that are available
from the Current Population Survey.
Clicking on “Income Data Tables” takes you to the tables available by year.
There are 3 types of tables available that we will explore today:
report tables,
detailed tables,
and historical tables.
To give you a little background
the report tables include all income and poverty tables from the current
income and poverty report.
Which include year to year
and historical tables and excel files.
The detailed income tables show detailed income data by selected characteristics
such as age, race,
educational attainment and more.
These tables are released each year so keep in mind that previous year's day that is not
inflation adjusted to the current year.
The historical income tables show income data over time by selected characteristics including current and inflation adjusted income.
Let’s start with the report tables. The “Income and Poverty in the United States:
2020” link takes you to the tables used for this report.
If you are interested in downloading the data as an excel file, click on the table link.
These tables are available at the national level geography.
Here on the right under related information, you can find the full income and poverty
publication including the report pdf
highlights,
tables and figures.
Let’s navigate back to the Income Data Tables page by clicking the back arrow.
There are three Current Population Survey Table links that take you
to the Detailed Tables for Family Income,
Household Income, and Personal Income.
Family income includes income from all family members
two or more people related by birth, marriage or adoption
living in the housing unit.
Household income includes income from all people who occupy a housing unit
regardless of relationship
a household may consist of a person living alone or multiple unrelated individuals or families living together.
Personal income is income received for an individual person.
As an example, let’s select the “Current Population Survey Tables for Personal Income.”
This table of contents page shows you the personal income tables, PINC01 thru PINC11.
The title for each table gives you the topic and the characteristics it is broken down by.
Remember to also decide if you are looking for money income or earnings.
Money income is defined as income received from a variety of sources on a regular basis
before taxes.
It includes earnings, unemployment, educational assistance, social security, etc.
Earnings makes up about
76% of money income.
And it's the sum of wage and salary income and self-employment income.
Let's look at an example of total Money Income
PINC01 shows selected characteristics of people 15 years and over by total money, income,
work experience, race, Hispanic-origin and sex.
Remember
these tables are published each year.
So, tables from previous years are not inflation adjusted to current dollars.
Once you've selected the table you can choose the income date of the year
as well as choose from several iterations.
For this table, iterations are first broken down by work experience.
Clicking on “Worked Full-Time, Year-Round”
will take you down the page to that section.
Then you have sex and race and Hispanic origin categories to choose from.
Under “Both Sexes”, let’s click on the table for “All Races”
to download and open the excel file.
This PINC01 table iteration shows
“Selected Characteristics of People 15 Years Old and Over
by Total Money Income in 2020”
for full-time, year-round workers, both sexes, and all races.
You can see the total number of people,
income distribution, median income, mean income, and Gini ratio by various characteristics,
including residence, region, age, relationship, educational attainment, and tenure.
Next, I will show you how to find tables that contain historical income data.
There are four Historical Income Table links: People,
Households, Families, and Income Inequality.
As an example, let’s click on Historical Income Tables: Households.
This page has all the household historical tables, broken down by a variety of characteristics.
For footnotes in the historical income tables see the “Historical Income Tables
Footnotes” link under the “Related Information” menu.
These will help you understand changes made to the survey over time.
For example, changes to race and Hispanic origin definitions,
survey information, or processing changes.
Once you find a table you are interested in,
click on the link to download the table as an Excel file.
If you are interested in income data by state, look for household income tables H8, H8A, and H8B.
These are the only published income tables from the CPS ASEC that are at the state level.
For more income data at the state level, you can download the microdata files
and do your own data analysis.
To find these files you need to navigate away from income data tables
and go to income datasets.
The CPS ASEC public use microdata files
contain data for households, families, and individuals.
These files can also be used if our published income tables do not cover what you are interested in.
These are great resources for income data.
I hope that you find them useful.
For more help with finding income data,
send an email to the Income Statistics Branch at the Census Bureau at sehsd.isb.list@census.gov.
To find more learning opportunities like this, go to census.gov/academy.
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