Question about average incomes and all that jazz?

Question

Where I live "the median income for a household in the CDP was $55,205, and the median income for a family was $63,670." This is from wikipedia. For a family, does it include everyone who works (like teens too) or just parents? And how much over the average would you have to make to be "above average"? If the income for the whole family together was...let's say $125,000 would that be above average? What about if it was a little bit above the average like $65,000? Is that above average?

Answer 1

The income for a family or a household is the sum from all earners and is greater than the median wage which less than $40,000 per year for the US.  Here is a inflation adjusted time-series graph of income by the number earners in the household. As you can see most of the growth in  income over the last several decades is due to the increased share from  the wages from additional workers.

http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/2006...

Your class is not just about income but life style  and disposable income. If a family income comes from one earner  so one adult  has time to take care of household and there is no  expenditures on for child care etc your standard of living is higher.

Answer 2

Yes, you live in an upper-middle class area in all likelyhood. You should look at the per capita income (that divides all the money in the area and shows how much each person would have equally).

For instance, the median income where I live is around $41,000. I live in a medium-sized city. The median income for a family here is about $50,000, with 14% of the population below poverty line.

And $125,000 means you are very wealthy (upper class) and $65,000 would be slightly upper-middle class.