Household purchasing power
Whose after-tax purchasing power has increased?
MacroRoom·Measure by MacroRoom, from BEA and BLS
A pay increase buys more only if it outpaces prices. This measure follows after-tax purchasing power across the income distribution, with saving rates and group-specific living costs as separate checks.
2017 dollars / household · 2024
Change in the group mean’s purchasing power.
DataPrimary measure through 2024
After-tax purchasing power
Mean real disposable personal income per household, reconstructed from BEA's published mean and quintile shares.
Quintiles ranked by equivalized disposable personal income (BEA).
Approximate group means: source shares are rounded. Income includes national-accounts noncash items. Household-size adjustment defines the ranking; displayed dollars are per household. Latest provisional values retain that status.
Loading history…
| Group | Through | Level | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bottom 20% | 2024 | $38,700 | +1.0% |
| 20th–40th percentiles | 2024 | $68,300 | +0.0% |
| Middle 20% | 2024 | $94,500 | +1.0% |
| 60th–80th percentiles | 2024 | $129,300 | +1.5% |
| Top 20% | 2024 | $326,300 | +1.2% |
Component data
Accessible chart data
Historical values load with the chart.
Methodology
After-tax purchasing power
For each quintile, the published share of disposable personal income is divided by 20% and multiplied by BEA’s mean real disposable income per household. This reconstructs the group mean in 2017 dollars using BEA’s own price adjustment. It is an approximation because the published shares are rounded; displayed dollars are rounded to the nearest $100.
Households are ranked by income adjusted for household size. The displayed amount is still a mean per household, not an equivalized amount or the median. Disposable income includes noncash national-accounts items as well as money received. The groups are re-ranked over time and do not follow the same families.
The composition chart combines pairs of published decile shares, applies them to each income concept’s national total, divides by the quintile’s household count, and uses the same BEA price adjustment. Social contributions and taxes are deductions. The explicit residual reconciles the displayed components with disposable income; it includes other personal income and rounded source shares. Employee compensation and other categories include noncash amounts.
Saving and living costs
The saving rates come directly from the BEA/BLS joint income and expenditure distribution. Negative saving can reflect drawing down assets as well as borrowing; it does not establish financial distress on its own. This research release has its own data vintage.
BLS’s research CPI uses equivalized before-tax income. Those groups do not match BEA’s after-tax groups, so the price indices are shown separately. They reweight sampled urban prices by group spending patterns. They contain monthly observations but are released annually and are not seasonally adjusted.
Dates, changes and limits
Every group retains its actual latest observation period. Comparisons use calendar dates; missing reference dates remain unavailable. Dollar and index changes are percentages, while rates and survey balances change in percentage points. Percent changes from a nonpositive base are unavailable. Annual observations stay annual.
The indexed view sets all selected groups to 100 at their first common positive observation within the visible window. Changing the group selection or history can change that baseline. The table always shows the underlying levels. A rising index describes improvement relative to that baseline, not an absolute standard of financial health.
Source releases can revise earlier observations. Retrieval dates, source hashes and cached-source flags are retained in the data manifest. A failed request retains the last available source with a visible note; a refreshed page does not imply that every underlying source was newly published.
Inputs and sources
Retrieved 2026-09-23
Retrieved 2026-09-23
Each chart names its measure’s source. Group definitions and dates can differ across the supporting panels.
Download
Download MacroRoom’s constructed measure (CSV)
Institutional supporting series are available from the original publishers above. The CSV preserves the period, population, units, estimation status and source links.