The Census Bureau recently came out with a bunch of data on US households from 2016. The data cover selected characteristics of households within different income groups. Here are the income groups along with the lower income limit for each:
In the last post, I looked at household income and age. This post will be about household income and the number of earners in the household. First a few definitions:
Household: all people who occupy a housing unit regardless of relationship.
Earner: any person 15 years old and over in the household with $1 or more in wages and salaries, or $1 or more of a loss in net income from self-employment during the preceding year.
Householder: what used to be called the "head of household" or "head of family.
Without further ado, let’s look at the number of earners within each household category:
A few stray observations: Almost two-thirds of households in the lowest income quintile have no earners. Just 1% of these households have two earners. Not that surprising, given almost two-thirds of the householders in this group are either under 25 or older than 54 (see last post).
It's also striking that three-quarters of the most affluent households have at least two earners. Again, not that surprising given their demographics. Speaking of which, check it out:
Source: Explaining U.S. Income Inequality By Household Demographics, 2015 Update. by Mark J. Perry. Accessed on 12/13/17: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4006302-explaining-u-s-income-inequality-household-demographics-2015-update
My purpose here is not to justify inequality. It is to understand why some people get stuck in poverty, because you can't hope to fix a problem you don't understand. And part of that is figuring out who needs help and what kind of help. Sometimes we're talking about old or disabled people, who don't need a job - they just need help in paying their bills. Sometimes we're talking about young people whose poverty is transient (see that 14% in the lowest income group with a Bachelor's Degree or more?), who don't really need special assistance from the government. And then there are the poorly educated and single parent families.
Next: Household Income and Housing Tenure