Independent
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
- Joined
- Oct 28, 2006
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Okay.Thanks, I stumbled across a source that explains some of the nuances in measuring retirement income here--
Income of Today’s Older Adults | Pension Rights Center
They use three kinds of demographic units: individuals with median at 23K, households at 38.5K, and 'aged units' at 30K. This last item is something I hadn't heard of and an explanation is provided in a link. I wonder whether SCF defined family income along the lines of 'aged units'?
The $38.5k matches my number for households from the 2015 Current Population Survey.
The $23k is about a thousand different from what I get if I use the CPS Table Creator and specify "persons", though I can match the number exactly using the CPS prepared reports and downloading the 65+ table here: https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/cps-pinc/pinc-08.html
The "units" number comes from a SSA report, and it uses CPS data as its source. https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/income_pop55/2014/about.html
They may be treating each married couple and each single person as one "unit", then finding the median of them. I could see how that would pull the median down if they avoided the incomes of other persons in the household.
The Fed's Survey of Consumer Finances uses their own survey, but may use the same approach.
I don't like blending single people and married couples into one number, but that's often what I see. Getting away from that was one of the reasons I did the OP.