Average Income and Poverty

I babbled about this in the fall and asked people what they thought the average income was per person in conversation. What I found then, and I was surprised as well, is that we (our social/economic circles) tend to overestimate what the average or median income is in America. This was back during the campaign when Obamarama was talking about giving a tax cut to those families making under $250,000.

I tossed up some links as proof but I came across this recently and wanted to share it.

In a nutshell, the median HOUSEHOLD income in America in 2007 was $50,233. Now, I don't know about you but to me that is not a lot for a household. For a median individual I would think that would be ok but a fair amount of households are dual earners and for it to be that low? Wow.

Poverty level, as a point of comparison, breaks down for a "family of four in 2007 was $21,203; for a family of three, $16,530; for a family of two, $13,540; and for unrelated individuals, $10,590.".

I'll be interested to see what the median household income is in 2009.