Cornell University |Posted by Bill Steele on September 1, 2013

Looking ahead, analyists predict that over the next two decades demographic shifts will be an important factor pulling down the median household income for Americans. (Credit: Images Money/Flickr)

“The median household income for Americans reached an all-time high in 2000, and has been falling ever since, a trend that’s likely to continue for the next two decades due to demographic shifts, experts predict.

“‘The average American is increasingly going to be black, Hispanic, and older. Unless [these demographic groups] earn considerably more than has been the case in previous decades, the average American’s household income is likely to fall,’ says Richard Burkhauser, a professor of policy analysis at Cornell University.

“Without important changes in public policy, these forces will drive down median income by about 0.5 percent per year over the next two decades, according to an analysis by Burkhauser and Jeff Larrimore, a former member of Burkhauser’s research group now with the Joint Committee on Taxation of the US Congress.

“Their report will be a chapter in a Russell Sage Foundation book, Changing Times: America in a New Century, to be published later this year.

“Mathematically, a median is the number exactly in the middle of a list; the report focuses on the person with median income as representing the ‘average American.’ If the average American has less money to spend, economic growth will be slowed.”

Continue reading this Cornell University report here.