Household Income vs. Family Income

Water Cooler
#1

I came across this confusing statistic. In Wikipedia:

  • According to The Best Places to Live 2007 in Money Magazine, Hillsborough’s $263,456 median household income is the highest in the country. The median family income is $370,945/year, and the average resident spends $11,023 per year on vacations.[9]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillsborough,_California

“Household Income” is defined as the combined income of everyone living in a residential unit. So, three roommates living together would constitute a “Household”. A family of four living together is also a “Household”, and so is a single person living by himself.

“Family Income” is the combined income of related people in a household. So, a married couple with kids is a “Family”. However, a single person is not a family and three roommates living together is not a family.

I am confused as to why there was such a huge difference between Family and Household incomes in Hillsborough in 2007. 85% of Households in Hillsborough are Families, so I would expect the numbers to be more closely aligned.

Or is this just a typo in Wikipedia? That $370k/year number seems a bit insane.

#2

Wouldn’t the median “household” be younger than the median “family”? Household stages of people’s lives come before family stages right? I don’t know – that’s my guess

#3

Divorce is expensive, dude?

#4

Yes, that is an intuitive explanation. However, it does not seem to match the demographics of Hillsborough; you would have no way of knowing this, but few young single people live in this town. While a small difference in Family/Household income could be attributable to “life stages”, a large difference like stated above would probably be due to other reasons.

#5

If single people aren’t contibuting to the “Family” stats, perhaps this suggests a large amount of dual income households.

#6

The population and number of households is pretty low, so a couple of relatively poor single people could skew the numbers. According to the link you provided, 8.4% of housholds were single people over age 65 which could do it. Interestingly, in 2000 the difference between family and household income was less than $7,000 per year.

#7

True, I did not consider that old people are a major percentage of non-family hoseholds. In fact, based on those numbers, single old people constitute over 50% of the non-family households in Hillsborough.