I was poking around the Census site and discovered another historical income series: median income by number of earners in the family. What caught my attention was that around the late 60s/early 70s the income for a single earner family flattens while the other income series (from no earner to 4 earner families) continue to grow.
I copied the data used in this graph into a Google spreadsheet Family Income by Earners. It can be viewed by anyone with a Google Account.
{Click on the graph to take a closer look}
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[tags]One income families, Two income families, Family Income[/tags]


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Nice use of Google spreadsheets to make some public information more accessible to others… On tip on usage – you can make those footnotes apear more readable by “merging” the adjacent cells on the right… so if you select cells A98 through J98 in the first sheet (for example) and then click the “Merge Across” icon in the edit bar (last one on the right), it will wrap that text across a wider area and make it look better…
Hi, thank you for the graphs. I am currently writing a senior project about wealth inequality and this is very helpful. I would like to share an information with you, which you may or may not know. It is about progressive taxation. If you look at the income inequality graphs and the level of tax progressivity in the USA, you will find almost 100% correlation between progressive taxation and growth or decline of income inequality. Decrease in tax progressivity simply makes the rich get richer. It is as though an economic law. Just a fact which I find interesting :)
how about figuring out the key to actually earning more income? work more spend less invest and on? isnt this an obvious idea?