Older Americans may have higher incomes than previously thought, according to new experimental data that’s being developed by the U.S. Census Bureau.
The Bureau this week published the first estimates from its National Experimental Wellbeing Statistics or NEWS, a project that aims to fix measurement errors in income and poverty data. The initial study looked at 2018 numbers, and the research team plans to extend the analysis to other years.
One key finding: Among householders aged 65 and over, the median income was estimated to be 27% higher than in the bureau’s previous analysis — and the poverty rate 3.3 percentage points lower.
