September 10, 2024
The Census released new data on median household income today showing a large jump, after adjusting for inflation. The Washington Post wrote about the reported rise, but told readers:
“After inflation, median household income rose to $80,610 last year, up from $77,540 in 2022 but less than the $81,210 families brought home in 2019.”
The problem is with the comparison to 2019, the last year before the pandemic. There was a large problem of non-response to the survey for 2019, which was fielded in the middle of the pandemic shutdown in the spring of 2020. The Census Bureau wrote about this problem when it released the 2019 data in the fall of 2020.
Their analysis found that when correcting for non-response bias, income was 2.8 percent lower than the number reported. If we adjust the reported number for 2019 for this bias, it would put median income for 2019 at $78,936, almost $1,700, or 2.0 percent, below the level reported for 2023.
In other words, the Post’s failure to accurately report on 2019 income numbers by adjusting for a well-known error in the data, led the paper to tell people the economy is worse under Biden than Trump by this measure, when the reality is the opposite. Income is higher, in spite of the impact of the pandemic in 2023 than in 2019.
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