If you see how real disposable personal income is defined, it basically just says how much personal income in total there is - if 90% of it was in the hands of 1% of the people, it does not tell you that. It does not tell you a median either - it's just how big the pool is. Household incomes are up, but is that inflation adjusted, and how does that compare to cost of living? The conclusion you are coming to is not supported by the data you provided alone.
> Household incomes are up, but is that inflation adjusted
Yes. That’s what the “real” part communicates in economics data.
> how does that compare to cost of living? The conclusion you are coming to is not supported by the data you provided alone
If aggregate real personal disposable incomes are up, and real median household incomes are up, for real median household disposable incomes to be down requires an extreme increase in lower income households’ costs of living compared with higher incomes households’. (No, rising wealth wouldn’t fix that disparity because we’re measuring income and consumption, the former which exempts capital gains.)
Inflation effects are unevenly spread across households [1]. But the slope of the effect, at least as of ‘21, was insufficient to shift the median negative. What it probably was sufficient to do, especially by 2024, is shift somewhere between the lower decile to maybe quartile’s real disposable household income negative since ~2025 to 2018, when we last moderated interest rates. But not since the GFC.
TL; DR While OP’s statement is true of some households, and probably most households in the lower decile to quarter, it’s not true in general. (Caveat: it may be true if we include recent Medicaid and poverty-related cuts.)
