Quote:
Originally Posted by P1et
So if you make $155K a year, you're top 5%? That's scary since $155K doesn't seem like that much anymore...
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Well considering wage and salary income only, $155K is good for a little better than top 5%, but another nuance is that these statistics make no effort to distinguish between single income households or dual income households (with kids or without kids). Something like 80% of households are dual income. Only 7% of households are so called "traditional" families with a married couple and kid(s) where only a single parent is the breadwinner.
So a two nurse home bringing in a combined $155k is equivalent to a single breadwinner making $155k, but earning $155k as a single individual is far more rare than even "top 5%."
Personal income statistics are a lot more difficult to find and for good reason. The vast majority of households are dual income, and many of those households file jointly (if married), but as of 2010 a single individual making $100,000 puts him or her in the top 6.61%, whereas for households $100,000 puts you in the top ~11-12% (roughly extrapolating from the table).
Then of course there are cost of living differences. $250k for a household is good enough to put you in the top 2.5%
overall, but in Manhattan alone that's more like top 6% (I have the data bookmarked somewhere but I can't find it at the moment) whereas in Texas it's more like top 2%. I recently found a list of what it takes to be in the top 1% (household, single or dual income)
by state. Not surprisingly, New York, California, and many of the northeastern states sit at the top of the list.