Marriage -- Path to Prosperity

There's not a lot to make you feel great about finances this week, but for the longer term, this WSJ piece from yesterday struck he as very interesting. According to the latest Census data, the real median family income in the US hit $50,233 in 2007, up $600 from 2006. However, the real median income for intact families -- mother and father in the home -- rose to $78,000, an all-time high.

Among the factors that tends to throw off statistics about household income or family income over the last 50 years is the fact that families have become both smaller (as in fewer children) and more splintered (as in more divorces and single parents) over the last 50 years. So flat household income can often represent an increase in real family income when you control for family size and marital status.

In the other interesting stats the piece presents: women and minorities showed the greatest increases of median income in recent decades, while white men have shown the least.