Median income per year (after tax)

Description: Value of income per year below which 50% of the population live.
Data source: Luxembourg Income Study (2026) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Unit: international-$ in 2021 prices
Date range: 1963-2024
Last updated: 2026-09-18
Next expected update: 2026-12-17
Managed by: Pablo Arriagada

This data shows the median income per person — the level below which half the population falls.
The data comes from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), which is based on national survey data. LIS takes the original data and harmonizes it by mapping the data onto a common set of definitions. This makes the data more comparable across countries than other sources, but at the cost of covering fewer countries. Read more.
Income is measured after taxes have been paid and government benefits — such as public pensions, unemployment benefits, and social assistance — have been received.

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The income data has been equivalized — that is, adjusted for household size. This makes living standards more comparable across households of different sizes, since people sharing a household can split costs like rent and heating. To make the adjustment, LIS uses the square root equivalence scale: it divides the total household income by the square root of the number of people in the household.
This data is expressed in constant international dollars to adjust for inflation and differences in living costs between countries. Read more in our article, What are international dollars?

Frequently asked questions

How did Our World in Data process this data?

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

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Data sources

Luxembourg Income Study – Luxembourg Income Study (LIS)

The Luxembourg Income Study Database (LIS) is the largest available income database of harmonized microdata collected from over 50 countries in Europe, North America, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Australasia spanning five decades.

Harmonized into a common framework, LIS datasets contain household- and person-level data on labor income, capital income, pensions, public social benefits (excl. pensions) and private transfers, as well as taxes and contributions, demography, employment, and expenditures.

Retrieved on

September 18, 2026

Retrieved from

https://www.lisdatacenter.org/our-data/lis-database/

Citation

This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data.

Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) Database, http://www.lisdatacenter.org (multiple countries; September 2026). Luxembourg: LIS.

How to cite

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Median income per year (after tax)”, part of the following publication: Joe Hasell, Bertha Rohenkohl, Pablo Arriagada, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, and Max Roser (2022) - “Poverty”. Data adapted from Luxembourg Income Study. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260918-081702/grapher/median-income-after-tax-lis.html [online resource] (archived on September 18, 2026).

How to cite this data

If you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Luxembourg Income Study (2026) – with minor processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

Luxembourg Income Study (2026) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Median income per year (after tax) – Luxembourg Income Study” [dataset]. Luxembourg Income Study, “Luxembourg Income Study (LIS)” [original data]. Retrieved September 18, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260918-081702/grapher/median-income-after-tax-lis.html (archived on September 18, 2026).

All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately. This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.

All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

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