This article needs additional citations for verification .(November 2012) |
Peak earning years refers to the time in life when workers earn the most money per year.
Given their initial lack of experience, workers' earnings start out low. Earnings peak when workers hit middle age, then begin to fall as retirement approaches. But peak earnings now occur later in life and reach a higher level.
In the 1970s the peak earning years were between 35 and 44 for people with only an elementary school education. However people who graduated from high school and college had a peak income between 45 and 54. [1] In 2009 peak income occurred between the ages of 40–55. [2] Twenty years ago, those in their peak earning years took home about twice as much as workers between the ages of 20 and 24. Now they earn more than three times as much. [3]
In the United States, a 401(k) plan is an employer-sponsored, defined-contribution, personal pension (savings) account, as defined in subsection 401(k) of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Periodic employee contributions come directly out of their paychecks, and may be matched by the employer. This pre-tax option is what makes 401(k) plans attractive to employees, and many employers offer this option to their (full-time) workers. 401(k) payable is a general ledger account that contains the amount of 401(k) plan pension payments that an employer has an obligation to remit to a pension plan administrator. This account is classified as a payroll liability, since the amount owed should be paid within one year.
A pension is a fund into which amounts are paid regularly during an individual's working career, and from which periodic payments are made to support the person's retirement from work. A pension may be:
In the United States, Social Security is the commonly used term for the federal Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) program and is administered by the Social Security Administration (SSA). The Social Security Act was passed in 1935, and the existing version of the Act, as amended, encompasses several social welfare and social insurance programs.
A salary is a form of periodic payment from an employer to an employee, which may be specified in an employment contract. It is contrasted with piece wages, where each job, hour or other unit is paid separately, rather than on a periodic basis. Salary can also be considered as the cost of hiring and keeping human resources for corporate operations, and is hence referred to as personnel expense or salary expense. In accounting, salaries are recorded in payroll accounts.
The Social Security debate in the United States encompasses benefits, funding, and other issues. Social Security is a social insurance program officially called "Old-age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance" (OASDI), in reference to its three components. It is primarily funded through a dedicated payroll tax. During 2015, total benefits of $897 billion were paid out versus $920 billion in income, a $23 billion annual surplus. Excluding interest of $93 billion, the program had a cash deficit of $70 billion. Social Security represents approximately 40% of the income of the elderly, with 53% of married couples and 74% of unmarried persons receiving 50% or more of their income from the program. An estimated 169 million people paid into the program and 60 million received benefits in 2015, roughly 2.82 workers per beneficiary. Reform proposals continue to circulate with some urgency, due to a long-term funding challenge faced by the program as the ratio of workers to beneficiaries falls, driven by the aging of the baby-boom generation, expected continuing low birth rate, and increasing life expectancy. Program payouts began exceeding cash program revenues in 2011; this shortfall is expected to continue indefinitely under current law.
Superannuation in Australia, or "super", is a savings system for workplace pensions in retirement. It involves money earned by an employee being placed into an investment fund to be made legally available to members upon retirement. Employers make compulsory payments to these funds at a proportion of their employee's wages. From July 2024, the mandatory minimum "guarantee" contribution is 11.5%, rising to 12% from 2025. The superannuation guarantee was introduced by the Hawke government to promote self-funded retirement savings, reducing reliance on a publicly funded pension system. Legislation to support the introduction of the superannuation guarantee was passed by the Keating Government in 1992.
Dissaving is negative saving. If spending is greater than disposable income, dissaving is taking place. This spending is financed by already accumulated savings, such as money in a savings account, or it can be borrowed. Household dissaving therefore corresponds to an absolute decrease in their financial investments.
In the UK tax system, personal allowance is the threshold above which income tax is levied on an individual's income. A person who receives less than their own personal allowance in taxable income in a given tax year does not pay income tax; otherwise, tax must be paid according to how much is earned above this level. Certain residents are entitled to a larger personal allowance than others. Such groups include: the over-65s, blind people, and married couples where at least one person in the marriage was born before 6 April 1935. People earning over £100,000 a year have a smaller personal allowance. For every £2 earned above £100,000, £1 of the personal allowance is lost; meaning that incomes high enough will not have a personal allowance.
Household income is an economic standard that can be applied to one household, or aggregated across a large group such as a county, city, or the whole country. It is commonly used by the United States government and private institutions to describe a household's economic status or to track economic trends in the US.
Income in the United States is measured by the various federal agencies including the Internal Revenue Service, Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Department of Commerce, and the US Census Bureau. Additionally, various agencies, including the Congressional Budget Office compile reports on income statistics. The primary classifications are by household or individual. The top quintile in personal income in 2019 was $103,012. The differences between household and personal income are considerable, since 61% of households now have two or more income earners.
Personal income is an individual's total earnings from wages, investment interest, and other sources. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a median weekly personal income of $1,139 for full-time workers in the United States in Q1 2024. For the year 2022, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the median annual earnings for all workers was $47,960; and more specifically estimates that median annual earnings for those who worked full-time, year round, was $60,070.
Poverty in the United Kingdom is the condition experienced by the portion of the population of the United Kingdom that lacks adequate financial resources for a certain standard of living, as defined under the various measures of poverty.
Affluence refers to an individual's or household's economical and financial advantage in comparison to others. It may be assessed through either income or wealth.
Income inequality has fluctuated considerably in the United States since measurements began around 1915, moving in an arc between peaks in the 1920s and 2000s, with a 30-year period of relatively lower inequality between 1950 and 1980.
Occupational inequality is the unequal treatment of people based on gender, sexuality, age, disability, socioeconomic status, religion, height, weight, accent, or ethnicity in the workplace. When researchers study trends in occupational inequality they usually focus on distribution or allocation pattern of groups across occupations, for example, the distribution of men compared to women in a certain occupation. Secondly, they focus on the link between occupation and income, for example, comparing the income of whites with blacks in the same occupation.
A maximum wage, also often called a wage ceiling, is a legal limit on how much income an individual can earn. It is a prescribed limitation which can be used to effect change in an economic structure.
Defined benefit (DB) pension plan is a type of pension plan in which an employer/sponsor promises a specified pension payment, lump-sum, or combination thereof on retirement that depends on an employee's earnings history, tenure of service and age, rather than depending directly on individual investment returns. Traditionally, many governmental and public entities, as well as a large number of corporations, provide defined benefit plans, sometimes as a means of compensating workers in lieu of increased pay.
Pensions in Norway fall into three major divisions; State Pensions, Occupational Pensions and Individual or personal Pensions.
In the United States, despite the efforts of equality proponents, income inequality persists among races and ethnicities. Asian Americans have the highest median income, followed by White Americans, Hispanic Americans, African Americans, and Native Americans. A variety of explanations for these differences have been proposed—such as differing access to education, two parent home family structure, high school dropout rates and experience of discrimination and deep-seated and systemic anti-Black racism—and the topic is highly controversial.
Shared earning/shared parenting marriage, also known as peer marriage, is a type of marriage where partners at the outset agree to adhere to a model of shared responsibility for earning money, meeting the needs of children, doing household chores, and taking recreation time in near equal fashion across these four domains. It refers to an intact family formed in the relatively equal earning and parenting style from its initiation. Peer marriage is distinct from shared parenting, as well as the type of equal or co-parenting that father's rights activists in the United States, the United Kingdom and elsewhere seek after a divorce in the case of marriages, or unmarried pregnancies/childbirths, not set up in this fashion at the outset of the relationship or pregnancy.