The median income is the income amount that divides a population into two groups, half having an income above that amount, and half having an income below that amount. The median can be calculated for household income, personal income or disposable income.
The median income differs from the national average salary or GDP per capita due to the income distribution. The median income is an economic indicator of the standard of living for the median person in a country. In line with the median voter theorem the median income growth is a democratic indicator of economic growth.
The measurement of income from individuals and households, which is necessary to produce statistics such as the median, can pose challenges and can yield results inconsistent with aggregate national accounts data. For example, an academic study on the Census income data claims that when correcting for underreporting, U.S. median gross household income was 15% higher in 2010.
The median equivalised household disposable income is the median of the disposable income which is equivalised by dividing household income by the square root of household size; the square root is used to acknowledge that people sharing accommodation benefit from pooling at least some of their living costs. The median equivalised disposable income for individual countries corrected for purchasing power parity (PPP) for 2021 in United States dollars is shown in the below table.
The following table shows the daily median per person income according to the Poverty and Inequality Platform of the World Bank.