The U.S. median household income for 2005 was $46,242 plus or minus $104, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released Aug. 29.
“Income, Earnings, and Poverty Data from the 2005 American Community Survey,” as the report is called, relies on data from the bureau’s new American Community Survey. The largest annual household survey in the United States, with a sample size of about 3 million households, it was implemented last year after the completion of a smaller four-year pilot program.
Prior-year comparisons, therefore, are not available. (In a separate Aug. 29 report, however, the bureau gave the “real median income of households in the United States” as $45,817 in 2004 and $46,326 in 2005, for an increase of 1.1 percent.)
In the Northeast, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey and New York all had median household incomes above the national median. Vermont’s figures were not statistically different from the national ones, while Maine and Pennsylvania’s median household incomes fell below the nation’s.
Rhode Island’s median household income of $51,458, ± $1,374, put the state in 11th place. (Because the nationwide sample is so much larger than that for any single state, the survey’s nationwide confidence margin is smaller than any state’s.)
New Jersey and Maryland came in first, at $61,672 (± $526) and $61,592 (± $595), respectively, a difference that was not statistically significant. Connecticut was number three, at $60,941, ± $812; Hawaii number four, at $58,112 ± $1,969; and Massachusetts number five, at $ 57,184 ± $694.
Household income was lowest in the South. Mississippi and West Virginia were roughly tied for 51st place, behind the other states and the District of Columbia (figures for Puerto Rico were not listed), with median household incomes of $32,938 ± $615 and $33,452 ± $801, respectively. Filling out the bottom five slots were Arkansas, Louisiana and Alabama.
Women continued to earn less than men in every state, the Census Bureau found. Nationwide, they earned a median income of $32, 168 (± $54), or 76.7 percent (± 0.2 percent) of men’s median income of $41,965 (± $61).
In Rhode Island, women earned 77 percent (± 2.4 percent) as much as men – a proportion not statistically different from the figure nationwide. Women’s median income was $35,522 ± $850, while men’s was $46,127 ± $850.
The gap was similar in Massachusetts, where women’s earnings last year came to 77.7 percent (± 1.1 percent) of men’s, but the pay was higher, with women earning a median wage of $40,025 (± $481) to men’s $51,493 (± $ 383).
The gender gap was smallest in Puerto Rico, where women earned 98.3 percent (± 4.2 percent) as much as men. The District of Columbia was number two, at 91.4 percent (± 4.1 percent), followed by Delaware at 82.4 percent (± 0.8 percent), California at 82.2 percent (± 0.7 percent) and Arizona at 81.3 percent (± 1.9 percent).
The greatest disparity was found in Wyoming, where women earned only 60.8 percent (± 3.4 percent) as much as men. West Virginia at 67.5 percent (± 2.0 percent), Louisiana at 68.6 percent (± 2.0 percent), Utah at 69.4 percent (± 1.8 percent) and North Dakota at 70.4 percent (± 2.0 percent) rounded out the bottom five.
Source: The U.S. Census Burea (www.census.gov)
