Income is what a family receives in a year; wealth is what it owns. The same statistics used on the Wealth page show that income is distributed far more evenly, and that the United States and Canada have similar medians and differ most in the top tenth. Each slide makes one point with one chart. Use the arrows, swipe, or the ← → keys; terms with a dotted underline are defined below.
1 / 12 Mean and median
US family income: a mean of $145,200, a median of $82,200
Before-tax family income in 2024: wages, business and investment income, and government benefits. The mean is 1.8× the median. Income is right-skewed, like wealth, but much less: for wealth, measured in the same survey, the multiple is 5.8×.
Medianthe family in the middle
$82,200
Meantotal ÷ number of families
$145,200
The bars use the proportions of the wealth chart on the Wealth page, where the mean bar reaches the right edge.
One hump: 23% of families have between $56k and $100k
A histogram of family income on a log scale. Unlike wealth, income has a single hump, and almost no family is at or below zero (0.2%, against 8.6% for net worth). The mode is $56k to $100k.
On a log scale the middle half of the distribution is close to symmetric: the quartile skewness of log income is -0.05, near the 0 of a log-normal distribution; for log wealth it is -0.21. On an ordinary dollar scale the quartile skewness is 0.26 for income and 0.52 for wealth.
SCF 2025 public data, income in 2024; each statistic computed on the five implicates and averaged. Each bar spans a factor of 1.78. Bars above $10m (0.02% of families) are too small to show.
3 / 12 Pen's parade
Mean income is reached at the 74th percentile; mean wealth at the 82nd
Families lined up from lowest to highest income: Pen's parade. The line climbs steadily through the middle and steepens only in the last tenth. 74% of families have less than the mean.
Percentile ratios: P90 ÷ P50 is 3.07 and P50 ÷ P10 is 3.67. For wealth, P90 ÷ P50 is 11.8.
SCF 2025 public data, families. The chart stops at P99, $1.15 million.
4 / 12 Canada
Canadian family income: a mean of C$115,000, a median of C$86,000
Total before-tax income of all family units in 2024, in Canadian dollars. The mean is 1.3× the median, against 1.8× in the United States.
At purchasing power parity the medians are within 8%; the means 42% apart
In 2025 US dollars at purchasing power parity, the American median family income is 8% above the Canadian, and the American mean 42% above. The two distributions differ more at the top than in the middle.
United States
Canada
MedianUnited States, 2024
$82k
MedianCanada, 2024
$76k
MeanUnited States, 2024
$145k
MeanCanada, 2024
$102k
For wealth the medians rank the other way: the Canadian median is about twice the American (see the Wealth page).
Show the numbers
Median and mean family income in 2025 US dollars
Median
Mean
Mean ÷ median
United States, 2024
$82,200
$145,200
1.77×
Canada, 2024
$76,300
$102,100
1.34×
Canadian dollars converted at the 2024 PPP of C$1.150 per US dollar (World Bank, via the World Inequality Database), then to 2025 prices with US consumer prices.
6 / 12 Lorenz curve
Gini coefficient of pre-tax income: 0.59 in the United States, 0.50 in Canada
For a cross-country comparison on one definition, the World Inequality Database combines tax records, surveys and the national accounts into pre-tax income per adult. Each Lorenz curve below is built from 100 percentile shares; the American curve sags further below the line of equality, and its Gini coefficient is 0.08 higher.
United States
Canada
Show the numbers
Share of pre-tax income held by groups of adults
Bottom 40%
Bottom 50%
Top 10%
Top 1%
Gini
United States, 2022
8.5%
13.3%
46.9%
20.7%
0.588
Canada, 2022
10.4%
16.9%
36.8%
12.1%
0.505
Pre-tax national income per adult, income split equally between spouses, 2022, the latest year estimated for both countries. World Inequality Database, release of 15 October 2026. The Gini is WID's own; recomputed from the curves it is 0.588 and 0.504.
7 / 12 Percentile ratios
Above the median the American distribution is wider; below it, the Canadian
Percentile ratios show where a distribution is spread out. P90 ÷ P50 is 3.32 in the United States and 2.59 in Canada. P50 ÷ P10 is 5.43 in the United States and 8.16 in Canada. The Palma ratio, which compares the shares of the top 10% and the bottom 40%, is 5.54 against 3.53.
United States
Canada
Pre-tax income excludes most government transfers, which matters most at the bottom of the distribution. P10 is $9k in the United States and C$8k in Canada, so small differences in P10 move P50 ÷ P10 a long way.
Above P99, average income is 3.4× the threshold in the United States and 2.4× in Canada
The inverted Pareto coefficient is the average income of everyone above a percentile divided by that percentile. The top 1% of American adults receive on average 3.4× the $569k it takes to enter the group; in Canada 2.4× of C$436k. A higher coefficient is a heavier tail.
United States
Canada
Above P90United States
2.55×
Above P90Canada
1.94×
Above P99United States
3.38×
Above P99Canada
2.42×
1× = no tail
In both countries the coefficient is higher above P99 than above P90: the tail gets heavier further out, which a single Pareto distribution would not do. The top 1% receive 20.7% of pre-tax income in the United States and 12.1% in Canada.
The top tenth of US families receive 46% of income and hold 72% of wealth
Both measures from the same survey of the same families. The bottom half receive 15% of income and hold 2.1% of wealth. The Gini is 0.56 for income and 0.82 for wealth.
Share of wealth
Share of income
Families are ranked by income for the income shares and by wealth for the wealth shares. Income is a flow, measured over a year; wealth is a stock, accumulated over many years from saving, changes in asset prices and inheritance.
SCF 2025 public data, families; income in 2024.
10 / 12 Over time
Mean ÷ median income has risen in both countries since the 1980s
Mean income divided by median income. In the United States it went from 1.58 in 1988 to 1.77 in 2024, with a high of 2.02 in 2021. In Canada it went from 1.15 in 1976 to 1.34 in 2024, below the American level in every year both are measured.
United States
Canada
Show the numbers
Mean divided by median family income
Income year
United States
Canada
1988
1.58
1.19
1991
1.50
1.22
1994
1.45
1.22
1997
1.59
1.26
2000
1.70
1.29
2003
1.64
1.29
2006
1.78
1.28
2009
1.71
1.30
2012
1.87
1.30
2015
1.95
1.30
2018
1.82
1.30
2021
2.02
1.29
2024
1.77
1.34
SCF income refers to the year before each survey, so the US points are dated by income year. Canada: yearly, Canadian Income Survey and its predecessors.
11 / 12 Wealth and pay
Average wealth per US adult equalled about 5 years of median pay in 1970 and about 16 in 2024
A ratio of a stock to a flow: average private wealth per adult divided by median labour income, as estimated in the research brief. In the United States it was 3.0 times as high in 2024 as in 1970.
The research brief The Earning–Owning Gap measures it for the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom and France and splits the change into three components: the wealth-to-income ratio, the labour share and the spread of pay. The Wealth page shows the distribution of wealth itself.
12 / 12 Limits
What these statistics can and cannot show
Three income definitions. The American survey measures before-tax family income including government benefits; the Canadian survey, before-tax total income of family units, mostly from tax records. The World Inequality Database measures pre-tax national income per adult, which also counts income that never reaches a household account, such as retained company profits, and excludes most transfers.
Before tax. Income taxes narrow every measure here, by different amounts in each country.
Units. Families in the surveys, adults in the World Inequality Database; none of the figures are adjusted for household size.
The top of the survey. The American survey excludes the 400 wealthiest Americans, and any survey samples the very top thinly; the tax-based figures from the World Inequality Database cover it better.
Purchasing power parity is an average across the whole economy and does not reflect regional costs such as housing.
1 of 12: US family income: a mean of $145,200, a median of $82,200
Terms used on this page
Mean
The total divided by the number of units: the average. One very large value can move it a long way.
Median (P50)
The middle value: half of all units have less, half have more. Very large values at the top do not move it.
Right skew
A distribution with a long tail of large values to the right. The mean lies above the median, and further above it the longer the tail.
Histogram
How many units fall into each range of values. The tallest bar marks the most common range, the mode.
Log scale
An axis on which each step multiplies the value by the same factor, so $1k to $10k takes the same space as $100k to $1m.
Mode
The most common value or range of values.
Quartile skewness
(P75 + P25 − 2 × P50) ÷ (P75 − P25), also called Bowley skewness. 0 for a symmetric distribution, up to 1 when the upper half is far more spread out than the lower. It uses only the middle half of the data, so the extreme tail does not drive it.
Pen's parade
Every unit lined up from lowest to highest, with the height of each showing its value: the quantile function drawn as a picture. Named after the economist Jan Pen, who described it in 1971.
Percentile (P10, P90, …)
The value below which a given share of units fall. P90 is the value that 90% are below and 10% above.
Percentile ratio
One percentile divided by another, such as P90 ÷ P50: how far the top of the distribution sits from the middle, ignoring the extremes.
Lorenz curve
The share of the total held by the bottom x% of units, for every x. If everyone held the same, it would follow the diagonal line of equality; the further it sags below, the more concentrated the total.
Gini coefficient
Twice the area between the line of equality and the Lorenz curve. 0 when everyone holds the same, 1 when one unit holds everything. Values can exceed 1 when some hold negative amounts.
Palma ratio
The share held by the top 10% divided by the share held by the bottom 40%.
Inverted Pareto coefficient
The average value of everyone above a percentile, divided by that percentile. A value of 2 at P99 means the top 1% hold on average twice the amount it takes to enter the top 1%. The higher it is, the heavier the tail. In a Pareto distribution it is the same at every percentile.
Heavy tail
A tail in which very large values are much more common than a bell curve would allow.
Purchasing power parity
An exchange rate that equalises what a currency buys across countries, rather than what it trades for in markets.
Implicates
The Survey of Consumer Finances fills in missing answers five separate times. Each statistic is computed on all five versions and averaged, as the Federal Reserve does.