This report presents data on the income of households, families, and people in the United States for calendar year 1999, as well as comparisons with 1998 and, in some cases, with 1989, the previous peak year in the business cycle. Changes in income noted in this report are based on real income (after adjusting for inflation). The Census Bureau compiled these data from information collected in March Supplements to the Current Population Survey (CPS), based on approximately 50,000 randomly selected households nationwide.
The CPS demographic supplement conducted in March of each year is one of the best known and most widely used of all continuing federal household surveys. For more than 50 years, analysts, researchers, and policy makers have used the CPS to examine annual changes in income and earnings and to compare them with historical trends. Television, radio, and newspapers frequently draw upon this source for statistics on American’s jobs, income, poverty status, health insurance coverage, marital status, migration, and other characteristics.
The estimates in this report are based on interviewing a sample of the population. Respondents provide answers to the best of their ability. As with all sample surveys, the estimates may differ from the actual values. Table A presents the confidence intervals for estimates discussed in the text. Data users should consider the levels of uncertainty when using these estimates.
(Most of the estimates described below are shown on Table A, Table B, Table E, and Appendix Table B-2; the estimates for states are shown on Table D.)
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1 Changes in real income refer to comparisons after adjusting for inflation. The percentage changes in prices between earlier years and 1999 were computed by dividing the annual average Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) for 1999 by the annual average for earlier years. See Table B-1 in Appendix B for values of the CPI-U from 1947 to 1999.
2 The difference between the 1998-1999 percent changes in income for family and nonfamily households was not statistically significant.
3 The 90-percent confidence interval for the 1998 and 1999 female-to-male earnings ratios is ± 0.01.
4 The 90-percent confidence interval for the 2.0 percent increase is ± 0.8.
5 The 90-percent confidence interval for the 8.1 percent increase is ± 1.0.