Kansas personal income growing, but slowly

For 2017, just four states had less growth in personal income than Kansas.

Statistics released today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, an agency of the United States Department of Commerce, show personal income in Kansas growing at a slow rate.

The figures released today are through calendar year 2017. For that year, personal income in Kansas grew to $141,459 million, up 2.4 percent from $138,105 million the previous year. These are current dollars.

Using inflation-adjusted dollars, income growth was 0.8 percent.

Of the states, BEA noted: “Two states had declines in real personal income — North Dakota (-1.3 percent) and South Dakota (-0.4 percent). States with the slowest growth in real personal income were Iowa (0.3 percent), New Mexico (0.6 percent), and Kansas (0.8 percent).”

The per capita personal income figures for Kansas rose by the same percentage values as the current and inflation-adjusted income. In current dollars, per capita personal income in Kansas for 2017 was $48,600.

BEA offers these definitions:

Personal income is the income received by, or on behalf of, all persons from all sources: from participation as laborers in production, from owning a home or business, from the ownership of financial assets, and from government and business in the form of transfers. It includes income from domestic sources as well as the rest of world. It does not include realized or unrealized capital gains or losses.

Personal income is measured before the deduction of personal income taxes and other personal taxes and is reported in current dollars (no adjustment is made for price changes). Comparisons for different regions and time periods reflect changes in both the price and quantity components of regional personal income.

The estimate of personal income for the United States is the sum of the state estimates and the estimate for the District of Columbia; it differs slightly from the estimate of personal income in the national income and product accounts (NIPAs) because of differences in coverage, in the methodologies used to prepare the estimates, and in the timing of the availability of source data.

Per capita personal income is calculated as the total personal income of the residents of a given area divided by the population of the area. In computing per capita personal income, BEA uses Census Bureau mid-year population estimates.