Adjusted for inflation, how has average INDIVIDUAL MEDIAN INCOME changed since 1980?

Answer 1

Income information is collected for households and not individuals so the information you want is not readily available. Here is a graph of household income by the number of workers, and households with one worker is an approximation of individual income.
http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/2006/10/29/income-by-number-of-earners/
There is also data on average wages of non supervisory workers which has been adjusted for both for consumption changes and the CPI so you can see the difference it makes, as well as for non cash benefits.
http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/2007/11/04/has-middle-americas-wages-stagnated/
In all the available data median incomes have fallen far behind GDP per capita and GDP per worker.

Answer 2

I don't know, that's a very difficult question to answer. For one thing, I'm not sure there IS a measurement of "individual median income" to base an analysis on in the first place. Some measures, as in the answer above, count household income, which is not individual income; or count hourly wages, which ignores many jobs and types of income; or ignore non-cash compensation, etc.

Even if you found good data on that, how do you account for inflation? There is a simplistic and completely invalid approach of comparing the official price level then and now, or calculating the compound average annual growth rate of the consumer price index over the 27 year period.

These approaches are invalid because they do not account for the change in consumption between 1980 and 2007 -- they can't account for the discontinuity when you consider that people today spend a substantial amount of their incomes on things that didn't exist in 1980, or on things that do a similar function but that are radically different.

Also, how to handle the cost of housing? Purchasing a house does not count as consumption in calculating the CPI, because a house is a financial investment -- the mortgage eats up more cash flow than in 1980, but when you sell you (usually) reap a huge profit that was unheard of in 1980.

Anyway I can't answer your question, but I just wanted to point out that anyone who thinks they ARE answering your question is most likely wrong. And stating that some measure of median income (obviously, a median) falls behind GDP per capita (an arithmetical mean), does not in any way answer the question, and is irrelevant.

Answer 3

Since 1980, US GDP per capita has increased 67%, while median household income has only increased by 15%. An economic recession will normally cause household incomes to decrease, often by as much as 10%.

Answer 4

Barely at all.