Income Percentile Calculator
See where your household income ranks vs. other U.S. households (Census ACS PUMS) for your age. Select an exact age — we blend the same age bands as the net worth tool — and get a weighted percentile (one decimal is display precision, not extra survey accuracy).
Methodology & Data Sources
Data source
U.S. Census Bureau ACS Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) 2018–2022, housing file (2022 vintage), accessed via the Census Data API. Variables: HINCP (household income), HHLDRAGEP (age of householder), WGTP (housing weight), ADJINC (income adjustment factor).
Estimator
Within each age band we compute weighted income percentiles on a 0.5-point grid (plus extreme knots), then store rounded dollars at each knot. Your exact age linearly blends the two neighboring age bands by midpoint — the percentile, benchmarks, and chart all use the same blended curve.
Inflation adjustment
Toggle to March 2026 dollars using Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI-U (2022 annual avg: 292.655, March 2026: 330.293, factor ≈1.1286), applied on top of the PUMS ADJINC-adjusted income basis. Turn off to view ACS reference-year dollars without that extra CPI step.
Privacy
Income and age stay on your device for the PUMS comparison. Optional ZIP lookup sends only the ZIP to this site’s API route to query published Census ACS medians; your income is not sent for that step.
Optional ZIP median-income scaling
If enabled, we look up ACS table B19013 median household income for the ZCTA and the United States (same approach as the net worth calculator), clamp the ratio, and scale the national income curve. That is transparently not “income in your ZIP” from PUMS — it is the national curve moved by a local-vs-national median-income multiplier.
Household income benchmarks by age (2026 dollars)
Key percentile thresholds from ACS 2018–2022 PUMS (housing file), CPI-adjusted to March 2026. Households with householder age equal to each listed age, using the same midpoint blend as the calculator.
| Householder age | 25th %ile | 50th %ile (Median) | 75th %ile | 90th %ile |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 | $36,663 | $66,707 | $106,907 | $157,060 |
| 30 | $47,564 | $85,473 | $136,749 | $203,181 |
| 35 | $53,090 | $97,800 | $159,477 | $243,624 |
| 40 | $56,656 | $105,385 | $174,328 | $270,105 |
| 45 | $59,295 | $111,200 | $185,013 | $287,770 |
| 50 | $58,788 | $112,152 | $188,739 | $294,533 |
| 55 | $53,264 | $105,170 | $181,258 | $287,464 |
| 60 | $44,844 | $92,274 | $163,261 | $265,381 |
| 65 | $38,709 | $79,317 | $141,114 | $233,628 |
Source: Census ACS 2018–2022 PUMS (housing), CPI-U adjusted to March 2026 (same basis as the methodology section).
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is a household income percentile?
- It tells you what share of comparison U.S. households have lower total household income in the past 12 months (before taxes) than you. Being in the 70th percentile means your household income is higher than 70% of households in the same age-of-householder comparison used for your selected age.
- What is ACS PUMS and who counts as a household?
- The American Community Survey Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) is a Census Bureau microdata file of housing units and people. This calculator uses the housing-unit file: each row is a household, weighted by WGTP. Income is total household income (HINCP) for the past 12 months, adjusted with ADJINC per Census guidance. Age is the householder’s age (HHLDRAGEP). This is not the same unit as the Federal Reserve’s SCF primary economic unit, though both describe households in everyday language.
- Where does my data go when I use this calculator?
- Income and age stay on your device for the percentile calculation. If you turn on optional ZIP adjustment, only your five-digit ZIP is used to look up published U.S. Census Bureau ACS median household income (table B19013); your entered income is not part of that lookup.
- Why does the 18–24 band look different from “all young adults”?
- PUMS only includes people in their own household as the householder. Students or young adults living with parents (not the householder) are not in separate household rows, so the 18–24 curve reflects householders in that age range — not every person aged 18–24 in the country.
- Why age-specific percentiles?
- Earnings and household composition change over the life cycle. Comparing your household to all ages mixes retirees with peak earners. Age-of-householder bands give a closer peer comparison.
- What income is included?
- HINCP is Census’s total household income for the past 12 months before personal income taxes, from all sources reported in ACS (wages, self-employment, interest, dividends, Social Security, public assistance, retirement, etc.), subject to top-coding in the public file. Capital gains are generally excluded from ACS income definitions. We exclude PUMS codes for GQ/vacant (HINCP = -60000) and negative loss codes from the percentile curve.
- Is this data up to date?
- The extract uses the 2022 ACS 5-year PUMS file (2018–2022 pooled), the standard Census release for subnational stability. Dollar values can be viewed in ACS reference-year dollars or CPI-adjusted to March 2026 using the same CPI-U factor as elsewhere on this site.
- What does the optional ZIP adjustment do?
- It is not a separate ACS income distribution for your ZIP. The calculator still uses the national ACS PUMS income curve by age. When you opt in and enter a ZIP, we look up median household income (ACS table B19013) for the ZCTA and the U.S. median, form a ratio (clamped to reduce outliers), and multiply every dollar on the national comparison curve by that ratio. Your entered income stays the same; only the yardstick moves. For income, that is a direct local-vs-national pay comparison, not a wealth proxy.