# income of each household

**URL:** <https://forum.ipums.org/t/income-of-each-household/1469>\
**Category:** CPS\
**Created:** [October 28, 2016, 4:53pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/income-of-each-household/1469 "2016-10-28T16:53:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Cassie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/db5fbb/32.png) [@Cassie](https://forum.ipums.org/u/Cassie)\
**Post date:** [October 28, 2016, 4:53pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/income-of-each-household/1469/1 "2016-10-28T16:53:00Z")

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If I want to look at the change of total income of household along the time. What variabel should I use: FTOTVAL, ADJGINC or HHINCOME?

What’s the difference of the three variables?

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**Author:** ![JeffBloem](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.ipums.org/jeffbloem/32/40_2.png) [@JeffBloem](https://forum.ipums.org/u/JeffBloem)\
**Post date:** [October 28, 2016, 5:35pm UTC](https://forum.ipums.org/t/income-of-each-household/1469/2 "2016-10-28T17:35:00Z")

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[ADJGINC](https://cps.ipums.org/cps-action/variables/ADJGINC#description_section) is a person level variable that reports an individual’s total gross (pre-tax) income from taxable sources minus certain items (such as individual retirement plan contributions, alimoney, medical savings, business expense accounts, etc.)

The difference between this variable and [FTOTVAL](https://cps.ipums.org/cps-action/variables/FTOTVAL#description_section) and [HHINCOME](https://cps.ipums.org/cps-action/variables/HHINCOME#description_section) is described in my [answer to your previous question](https://forum.ipums.org/t/hhincome-and-ftotval/1466/1). Also note, most information regarding the differences between variables is available online on each variable’s description tab.

The key difference between each of these variables is ADJINC is a person-level variable and FTOTVAL and HHINCOME are both household-level variables. Importantly, however, FTOTVAL reports aggregated income totals based on the US Census’ definition of “family”, while HHICOME is based on a straitforward, yet ridged, definition of “household”.