Median household income fell by 2.3% in 2022 on an inflation-adjusted basis, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday.
The report, which is released on an annual basis and is taken from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement, shows real median incomes falling for the third year in a row.
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Median household incomes peaked at $78,250 in 2019, the year before the pandemic. They declined in 2022 to $74,580, a year that saw inflation soar, undercutting household purchasing power.
“Despite nominal gains, historically high inflation resulted in a decline in real median household income,” said Liana Fox, assistant division chief for economic characteristics in the Census Bureau’s Social, Economic, and Housing Statistics Division.
The figures released on Tuesday showed that poverty was flat, with about 11.5% of the population, or 38 million people, below the poverty line, which was $29,678 for a family of four.
The bureau also reported a jump in child poverty by one metric, the supplemental poverty measure, or SPM, from 5.2% to 12.4%. The increase was attributable in large part to the expiration of the temporary expanded child tax credit implemented by Democrats and President Joe Biden as a form of pandemic relief. The SPM, unlike the official poverty measure, includes tax credits in calculating household resources.
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Unlike the official poverty measure, which sets the poverty line based on the cost of necessities for living, the SPM sets the poverty line relative to overall incomes in a given geographical area — meaning it measures relative, rather than absolute, poverty.
Biden said in a statement that the report “shows the dire consequences of congressional Republicans’ refusal to extend the enhanced Child Tax Credit, even as they advance costly corporate tax cuts.”
