Personal income per resident: methodology

Personal income per resident, from the BEA Regional accounts (table CAINC1, line 3), beginning in 1969.

BEA's own division, not ours. This is personal income divided by midyear population, as BEA publishes it. We do not compute it from the other two series, so rounding here is BEA's.

A county average is not a typical resident. The mean is pulled upward by the top of the distribution, and in a small county a handful of high-income households moves it noticeably. It is not a median and should not be read as what an ordinary household receives. Douglas County's figure sits far above Nevada's for exactly this reason.

Revisions. BEA restates its regional estimates every year, and the restatement reaches back: a figure for 2019 is not the figure that was published in 2019. We do not overwrite what came before — each run stores its values under a new vintage, so a number cited last year stays retrievable after BEA revises it. This is the dataset the vintage model exists for.

Nominal dollars. Published as current dollars for the year in question, with no deflation and no inflation adjustment of ours. Comparing 1969 to 2024 directly compares two different dollars.