Income Level

Income level is a term generally derived from personal income, or assessed via income proxies, to provide demographic information about individuals and/or groups. High, medium, and low income levels reflect varied levels of affluence and educational attainment, and therefore are contributing factors to socioeconomic status. Lower income levels have been found to be associated with increases in obesity and comorbidities such as diabetes, hypertension, and high serum cholesterol.

Income level has been negatively correlated with obesity; lower income people have higher rates of obesity.

In the least complex accounting terms, income from which income level is derived is all money earned during a specified period of time. The Bureau of Economic Analysis defines sources of personal income as wages, salaries, employee compensations, and supplements fewer contributions for government social insurance, adjusted proprietors' income, rental income, interest and dividend income, and government social benefits. However, the U.S. Census Bureau measures money income, defined as earnings before taxes that do not include the value of noncash government social benefits such as food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, public housing, and employer-provided fringe benefits, and uses money income to calculate per capita, real median income and household incomes. Nonregular income, from bartering to illegal activities, is not definable for the purposes of data collection and statistics, even though it may contribute to income levels.

Researchers working with various groups sometimes choose to assess “resources” as income, and thus choose to include government benefits, for example, social security income, food stamp benefits, and so forth, in income determinations. Median and household incomes that take into account annual changes in the consumer price index are available to discern the general economic well being as well as the number of people in varied income levels per region.

The minimum income level below which a person is officially considered to be lacking in adequate subsistence [Page 395]and to be living in poverty is annually calculated and published in the Federal Register by the Department of Health and Human Services. This calculated value is referred to as the poverty level, poverty threshold, or poverty line and is used for qualifying individuals within families with an income deficit for various government social benefits. The U.S. Census Bureau publishes the absolute poverty threshold and other income levels, for example, 125 percent poverty level, by sex, age, and race by state, county, and so forth. It is important to note that these calculations do not vary geographically and are therefore insensitive to cost-of-living differentials.

To compare households' incomes to the federal poverty threshold, family unit size and annual income must be discerned. Researchers should take note that in lower income households, family unit size varies radically and its discernment can be a difficult due to the inherent complexity of defining “household member” in populations with a high prevalence of extremely varied intergenerational households and shared living arrangements, for example, residence in group housing situations or shelters. Furthermore, self-reported income figures can be difficult to collect and/or discern due to inherent complications, for example, weekly variations in income, the embarrassment some individuals experience in revealing their income, and so forth.

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