Household income is the most comprehensive measure of a country's citizens' material well-being. It includes not just income from employment, but every form of income, including all retirement income, near cash government transfers (like food stamps), and investment gains.

Internationally comparable data on household income are difficult to find. Definitions differ frequently, as does the treatment of taxes (i.e., gross versus net income). Fortunately, the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) has recently added a publicly available database with comparable statistics on household incomes for several countries, as has the OECD.^[1] These are the sources used.

Below are presented the mean and median disposable household incomes, adjusted for differences in household size.^[2] Thus, the figures presented are per person (equivalized) and after all income taxes and social contributions are paid. All figures were converted using respective year purchasing power parities (PPP) for private consumption, which is the recommended way to convert incomes for international comparisons.^[3] The PPP conversion rates are taken directly from the OECD database. All incomes are in the prices when income was earned, and refer to year 2004, except for Australia (2003), UK (2004–2005), and Sweden (2005). The exact definition of income can be seen in the LIS website (variable DPI), though generally it includes all cash income (Earnings, Pensions, Interest, Dividends, Rental Income, Social Transfers) and excludes most non-cash income (e.g., like employer contributions to social insurances, or the value of government provided health care and education). Note that capital gains are excluded from the income definition.

Caution should be made when comparing countries based on a strict ranking, since not all the countries are capturing the same amount of income. When compared to National Accounts data (adjusted for differences in definition), the datasets capture anywhere from 75-95% of the true income. More specifically, countries where surveys are used range from around 80-85%, while register countries (Netherlands, and the Scandinavian countries) are capturing over 90% on average. The U.S. dataset only captured 80% of the comparable aggregate as of 2004, with similar amounts for UK, France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, and Austria. Spain was the lowest at 71%.

This is what a family in the middle of the income distribution earns in a year.

Data are in United States dollars at current prices and current PPPs in 2007.

Rank	Country	2007[4]
1	Luxembourg	34,407
2	United States	31,111
3	Norway	31,011
4	Iceland	28,166
5	Australia	26,915
6	Switzerland	26,844
7	Canada	25,363
8	United Kingdom	25,168
9	Ireland	24,677
10	Austria	24,114
11	Netherlands	24,024
12	Sweden	22,889
13	Denmark	22,461
14	Belgium	21,532
15	Germany	21,241
16	Finland	20,875
17	New Zealand	20,679
18	France	19,615
19	Japan	19,432
20	South Korea	19,179
21	Slovenia	18,860
22	Spain	18,391
23	Italy	16,866
24	Greece	15,758
25	Israel	14,055
26	Czech Republic	12,596
27	Portugal	12,515
28	Estonia	9,836
29	Poland	9,113
30	Slovak Republic	9,071
31	Hungary	8,531
32	Chile	7,851
33	Turkey	5,940
34	Mexico	4,689
—	OECD	19,229

• Household income
• List of countries by average wage
• List of countries by monthly average wage
• List of countries by median household income
• Compensation of employees (per hour)