Median house prices and incomes revisited

Hey,

A couple of weeks ago I posted some stats about median household incomes, median home values and car prices, etc. and asked for explanations of what seemed like discrepancies. But looking at statistics more closely I see a better explanation than was offered (either that median households go into massive debt to afford median houses, or that $42K annual income is sufficient to pay for a median priced house and car.)

The median house price stated this morning on NPR is actually $181K, well over what I had remembered. (Hence my two homes combined are actually worth a third, not half, the average house price.) But the median *household* income is based on all households including a large and growing number of one person households-- mostly renters I presume. Median *4-member family* income for 2001 is $63,278, enough to buy one of those median houses and a median priced car. Only 68% of housing units are owner occupied, so about a third of the population rents and presumably homeowners' incomes are considerably higher on average than renters'.

This helped puts things into perspective.

CYD

The median income of home owners is surely higher than the median income of all workers.