About 30% of households headed by someone 65 or older brought in $100,000 or more in 2025, up from 28% the year before, according to the Census Bureau.
Credit: Iuliia Zavalishina / Getty Images Key Takeaways
The median income for households headed by someone 65 or older rose 3.1% in 2025, in line with working-age households.
Older adults increasingly rely on income sources beyond Social Security, such as jobs and retirement accounts, to make ends meet.
The poverty rate among older Americans remained unchanged, even as it declined for all other age groups.
Older households kept pace with workers last year—until you look at the older adults with the least.
Real median income for households headed by someone 65 or older rose 3.1% to $59,680 in 2025, the Census Bureau said Tuesday. That’s roughly in step with working-age households, whose median income rose 2.7% to $101,900. The median income for all households reached $87,460, up 2.6%—the highest in Census records dating to 1967.
But poverty among older Americans didn’t budge, even as it fell for all other age groups. Claire Casey, AARP’s president, said in a statement that the release confirms that “rising prices, an eroding social safety net, and diminishing access to quality jobs are creating extreme precarity for older adults.”
Why This Matters to You
Census data shows where most Americans’ retirement income comes from: Social Security, a pension, IRAs and similar accounts, and a paycheck for a growing number of seniors. Knowing how those pieces fit together can help you plan for retirement.
Gains for older people are notable for where they didn’t come from. Social Security’s 2.5% cost-of-living adjustment for 2025 matched the inflation measure the Census Bureau uses, so those benefits delivered no real gain.
The figures don’t say which income sources drove the rise. But they do show how older adults are turning more to other income sources to make ends meet.
Households headed by someone 65 to 74 had a median income of $68,800 last year. For those 75 and older, it was $50,880.
Among ages 65 to 74, the median Social Security benefit was $20,980. The 33% with jobs earned a median $45,960, more than twice the median benefit.
At ages 75 and older, the mix shifts much more toward Social Security. Only 10% had earnings from work, while 93% drew Social Security, with a median benefit of $21,690.
Across everyone 65 or older, pensions are still a bigger income source than 401(k)s: 29% had pension income, while only 19% drew on a 401(k), IRA, or similar account. Two-thirds had interest income, but the typical amount was only about $1,800.
Meanwhile, about 30% of households headed by someone 65 or older had incomes of $100,000 or more in 2025, up from 28% in 2024, adjusted for inflation. Among households headed by someone under 65, it was 51%.
At the other end of the income scale, the official poverty rate for people 65 or older held at 9.8% in 2025, even as the rate for all households fell to 10.2%.
The government’s Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), which accounts for out-of-pocket medical expenses and certain benefits the official measure excludes, was bleaker for seniors. Under this measure, the senior poverty rate was 15.4%, about the same as 2024 but still the highest level since 2013.
Medical costs alone added 3.8 percentage points to the supplemental rate, pushing about 2.5 million people 65 or older below the poverty line.
Private health coverage among older adults also fell 2.8 percentage points last year, while enrollment in both Medicare and Medicaid increased.
Social Security remains a bulwark against poverty for older Americans. Tuesday’s data shows the program kept 29 million people above the supplemental poverty line in 2025, more than 70% of them age 65 or older. Without Social Security, the older adult poverty rate would have been 32 percentage points higher.
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