Median household income measures all sources of income - wage & salary, investments & rents, proprietors' income, pensions, transfer payments, and other sources for a household. The median household income is the value which 50% of households are below and 50% are above. Households are different from families, since they may contain unrelated people living together or single inhabitants in a dwelling.
Median household income provides a more accurate view of the economic progress of an entire population than the average or mean since the median gives a better middle value of a skewed distribution. Income distribution in most U.S. communities does not follow a normal, or bell-shaped, distribution.
This indicator measures the annual median household income for households in Walla Walla & Columbia Counties combined. Washington State and the U.S. are offered as benchmarks. Additional information, including the median household income in constant dollar values for Walla Walla and Columbia Counties combined, can be found in the "Download Data" section.
According to the US Census Bureau, the pandemic made the collection of accurate one-year estimates for the American Community Survey (ACS) impossible in 2020 and only released five-year estimates.