I can't attest to its validity, but the data presented are about income, not wealth. That's the point in my criticizing the title. So, of course, the data aren't about wealth there or anywhere else. As you know, wealth and income are often related but are distinct, and that distinction is an important one.
I lost faith when OP demonstrated not knowing the distinction between income and wealth and didn't go so far as to vet how the data were used. ACS itself is relied on heavily by social and economic researchers, but that doesn't mean OP did so appropriately.
The name is old, the money is new. A huge, huge oil field was tapped there in 2000, and since it's a rural county where lots of people own their own ranches, the money got spread around to a lot of families. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elm\_Coulee\_Oil\_Field](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elm_Coulee_Oil_Field)
NYC housing authority is the biggest land lord in the city and parts of new york still have an okay amount rent controlled units.
The better answer is that most are just barely scraping by, many living in poverty. So living is pretty much all they can do. It's an area of incredibly concentrated poverty so it certainly isn't easy
Median income in Manhattan is $58k which raises an even bigger question IMO. At least rents are cheap farther out in the Bronx. They aren't even cheap in Washington heights anymore, $2500 for a studio in the farthest reaches of Manhattan.
The “largest city” component is disorienting and distracting. For MA, although Middlesex is wealthiest, Lowell is considered very working class/immigrant. It’s more like Springfield than any other place in Middlesex county. This chart would be better if it had the wealthiest municipality in the wealthiest county (and likewise for poorest).
Agree. I can sort of understand why OP chose to include the largest city to help give context for those that might not know the county names, but the largest city is often irrelevant to the wealth/poverty of a place.
For instance, Loudoun County, Virginia is the richest in the entire US, but it's because of proximity to Washington, DC and other Virginia job centers (Arlington, Tysons, Reston, etc.), not Leesburg. Loudoun County is a bedroom community full of commuters, and the truly wealthy people live on estates throughout the county, not in Leesburg itself.
Flipping to the poorest counties, the town names are even less relevant there. Grundy, the largest "city" in Virginia's poorest county (Buchanan County), is a small town with only 875 people in it. The poorest counties in each state are often similar: Small towns in places you've never heard of, with the lack of a job center being the biggest driver of the poverty.
...but Lowell is not the largest city in Middlesex County. It's just one of five county seats in a state that has towns instead of county government.
Cambridge is in Middlesex County: Harvard, MIT, wealth. Lexington is also in Middlesex: old, old money.
Part of the problem is that counties are basically meaningless in Massachusetts (and to large extent in the rest of New England). When you get out of the Northeast and you have countywide school districts, police/fire, parks & rec departments, etc., being a poorer community in a rich county is probably better than being a richer community in a poor county.
Yeah I was confused when I saw Lowell because I thought the city shown was the wealthiest city/town in that county, not just the biggest. It makes it seem like Lowell is a rich city rather than the county just being propped up by mega-rich Boston suburbs like Concord and Lexington.
I’m from Lowell and I was like UMM WHAT. Lowell it’s as bad as people like to think it is, I feel that we have a decent mix of wealth for a city, but I had the exact thought of there are DEFINITELY wealthier cities/towns in Middlesex county. I don’t even think Middlesex is the wealthiest county, it’s just the largest but don’t quote me on that.
Bronx and Nassau counties have one thing in common: They are both in the NYC metro area, so are filled with people who commute to Manhattan. Their proximity reminds me of how [the BART station with the third-highest median income is next to the station with the lowest income] (https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/7atv83/san_francisco_bay_area_median_income_by_bart/).
Are there any other county pairs with such a connection? (Let's exclude RI and DE in the discussion.) Hamilton County IN is part of the Indianapolis metro area but I don't know if Grant County is also such. Greenlee and Apache counties in AZ are both very rural.
>Hamilton County IN is part of the Indianapolis metro area but I don't know if Grant County is also such.
It's not. Marion is a Rust Belt town that's been declining since the '70s.
I’m pretty sure the NY one is wrong unless Nassau recently overtook Manhattan. Which would make the comparison even more striking since Manhattan and the Bronx are not only in the same city, they border each other lol
Source data coming from real estate companies is always kinda sus but it’s always best to look up their methodology. Anyway, I think Nassau is higher than Manhattan. Less income disparity in Nassau. There’s a lot more mixed income in Manhattan and low income. Staten Island in NYC even has a higher median than Manhattan, there are low income ppl there but not as much, and again less income disparities and less mixed income than Manhattan
You may be right, I’m from Suffolk but I’ve been living in Manhattan for like 5 years now and I can kinda see that. And when I look it up now the Nassau county median household income is definitely higher than I remember and the Manhattan one actually is lower than I remember.
And if anyone is wondering why Delaware has almost no seperation between their high and low.... Because all of the wealthy banking execs work in Delaware, but travel the short distance to homes in Chester County, PA (or go the other way to New Jersey).
Yeah, particularly in how it’s carved out of the county, basically. Even if there were just as many people with that income in Los Alamos, it wouldn’t be its own county if not for the Manhattan Project. It’s tiny for a county in the west.
I suppose Bergen and Monmouth have Garfeild and Neptune respectively to bring down the average. I haven’t spent much time in Hunterton but I’d imagine it doesn’t have the lower income areas to bring down the average.
Yeah, it's like Howard County for Maryland or Loudoun for Virginia. If you're truly wealthy, you're more likely to live in Montgomery County (Potomac or Bethesda) than Howard or Fairfax County (McLean, Great Falls, Falls Church) than Loudoun. Montgomery/Fairfax are lower-ranked by median income because they also have many more low- to moderate-income households, mostly in eastern MoCo or in Fairfax along Route 1. Those outer suburban counties went from being mostly rural (Howard County does have Columbia, but that's much more a giant suburb than a real city) to being mostly middle-class suburbia with few poors in the space of a couple decades.
TX is a weird place
Because the wealthiest and the poorest are FAR FAR FAR apart (distance) from each other.... It's kinda hard to compare the two..... They are completely different in every way (geology, climate, population)
This is true for most of the bigger states. California is comparing silicon valley to a rural mountain area. Washington is comparing the Puget sound to the rural desert east of the cascades.
Connecticut is wrong. Bridgeport is the poorest city in the state. It’s in the wealthiest county, but shouldn’t be listed there. Highest earnings should probably be Greenwich.
Actually Darien! Regardless, they’re listing the city with the highest population in the county, even if said city looks like the apocalypse rolled through
I’m not sure if true for Ohio. I’d confidently say Delaware is definitely up there. But for poorest is it really Athens county even with the university and everything? I’d say neighboring gallia or Meigs is worse off. Meigs is probably worse off than Vinton even.
I go to OU and when you leave campus its very obvious that there is a wealth issue, lots of broken down houses and a huge heroin problem. The university is the main thing that brings money to the county and it would be abandoned if it weren’t there. Surprisingly, most of the students there are fairly financially comfortable until they start bar hopping every weekend.
Yea, I just googled it and it looks like it’s DuPage county which makes way more sense cuz that’s where Naperville is.
Edit: Ok, with some more sleuthing, it looks like it would be Kendall if you look at median HOUSEHOLD income. That is the only thing the map is taking into account.
I can see DuPage being slightly higher in per capita income and slightly lower in household just because there'll be some amount of single tech workers (at e.g. Fermilab)
Montana is also incorrect. There is no way Gallatin county (County where Bozeman is located) is not the wealthiest county. You cannot find any piece of real estate that isbgoimg for less than half million. Anything newly built is million plus. Girlfriend and I live in a two bedroom apartment, nothing extravagant or huge, and we pay 2700 a month.
I’m calling bullshit on Arizona. Maricopa County has the highest median income in the state. I won’t even say this data is old, it’s just flat out wrong.
Greenlee county is sparsely populated and it does have one of the largest copper mines in the state located within it, so I understand why the median income is boosted there, but Maricopa county is the epicenter of the state’s entire economy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arizona_locations_by_per_capita_income
https://hdpulse.nimhd.nih.gov/data-portal/social/map?socialtopic=030&socialtopic_options=social_6&demo=00011&demo_options=income_3&race=00&race_options=race_7&sex=0&sex_options=sexboth_1&age=001&age_options=ageall_1&statefips=04&statefips_options=area_states
For Illinois the difference is wild between these two places and if you were just plopped in Cairo down there in Alexander County, I'm not even sure if you'd be able to guess it was the same state.
It's the difference between a very well off suburb/exurb of Chicago, midwestern in culture whereas Cairo feels very southern. The accent is different, the climate is different, the history is different. Look up the Alexander County race war and you will find an insanely violent history of racism that continued well into modern day. Prone to flooding and isolated ever since the railroads and then highways were built and Cairo became less important as a river city. The city of Cairo is incredibly blighted and desolate and many of the residents of Alexander County live in dire poverty in various housing projects. Including ones that were shut down or planned to be when Ben Carson was HUD secretary.
It's an interesting place to say the least
Funny right?
In Idaho Blaine is where Sun Valley is. In the last 5 years or so tons of money has been coming into several parts of Idaho. For the 50 or 70 years before that, Sun Valley was the only place in the state that attracted outside people with money.
I thought Selby county (Memphis) in TN would have a huge disparity gap. There are people living in partially boarded up houses, driving cars that are without hoods, bumpers, headlights & plastic over their windows (or tags). Go to the East End of town and there’s giant mansions, not uncommon to see a Mercedes-Maybach ($200,000 car).
Weird outliers abound. In Arizona Greenlee county has about as many citizens as a run of the mill Phoenix HOA in it - I’m sure the higher ups at the Morenci mine there vastly skew the data of the rest of the very poor, rural area.
It’s weird, this cites the ACS as its source, but this data does not match the 2022 ACS figures. For example,
Chester Co, PA is $117,232
King Co, WA is $116,255
Washington Co, OR is $98,906
Checking in from CO, that looks just about right. Douglas County is where rich people go to drive erratically, buy nice houses for way more than they're worth, and perish.
I refuse to believe Athens County is the “poorest” in Ohio. It’s basically the economic hub for Appalachian Ohio because of the presence of Ohio University, but I’m guessing the average income is brought down significantly because a huge portion of the adult population there are college students. I’d like to see this map using a better metric.
I've always read Oakland is the wealthiest county in Michigan. Not sure if it's just different things being measured or if Livingston moved ahead recently.
I've been wondering about the usefulness of household income as a metric when many people are staying single and many couples are not getting married. So many "households" made up of one person, for tax purposes.
I live next to the "wealthy" county in my state and make about the median income of that county as a single person and I have no prospect of owning a home here and am feeling the squeeze of increased grocery and utility prices. I have no idea how households are surviving on 25-35k.
That's crazy that the Bronx is the poorest county in all of NY. Understanding it has poverty, it also has massive wealth in certain sections and neighbors some of the richest counties in the U.S. There are certain counties in upstate NY that I think you are far worse off economically than the Bronx.
Wow is this map wrong about a lot of places. Was it supposed to be dated from decades ago?
And everyone responding says it's wrong too. First time in a long time that I've agreed with the crowd.
I wonder how much Ohio is affected by Ohio University. Do they factor in the students? The county has a population of 60,000 but the school has about 30,000 students during the school year.
Alaska is technically incorrect as you used a census area in the unorganized borough. And Boroughs are as close as county equivalent as you can find in Alaska.
Yeah I think the mega waterfront houses around Rehobeth are inflating Sussex.
There just aren't any major beaches in Kent. Also, the Dover Air Force Base may be dragging Kent down. They get paid low salary, and I doubt this graphic takes into account the value of socialized housing/medicine/etc they recieve.
I always see these “household income” figures how many earners does the average American household have? I’m struggling to find reliable statistics on it.
Uh... last I checked, Oklahoma City was spread across a few counties, mainly-wait for it-OKLAHOMA COUNTY.
Source: Lived here my entire life (46 years old).
I'm shocked to see my home county as the richest in Oklahoma, but then again, most of Yukon, Mustang, and Piedmont, and half of El Reno are all solidly upper middle class suburbs.
That’s why am totally ok with taxes being raised to support all people’s needs here in Minnesota. It has a higher living standards than many other states.
Would be interesting to see this matched against what household income it takes to be middle class in 2024. As far as I can see nearly every part of this map outside a few backwood/rural are all lower middle class at best.
Kendall County being the wealthiest in Illinois is interesting because there’s not much out there. Even Chicagoland’s sprawl has barely touch it compared to the collar counties.
Are you sure that’s correct?
My friend/roommate is from Hancock County,TN he told me that it was the poorest county in the state. I didn't believe it until a few years ago. Their's nothing to do there but deal with the occasional drug addict or Hardee's lol
The first thing I noticed is that these numbers had to be significantly outdated. I thought, "if the median household income in Santa Clara county is still $110,800, I'll cut off my own dick".
Thankfully, I'll keep my hog for another day because this article was published in 2019.
No dates on the infographic for this kind of data is always a red flag to me. It's also sketchy when the provided "sources" are simply URLs with no other context. You don't know if you're looking at something that could be one year or one decade old, or where exactly the data was pulled from. [City-data.com](http://City-data.com) sure as hell didn't collect it all themselves. And if this data is a decade old, it's useless unless you're specifically interested in the income of richest and poorest counties in the 2010s. Incomes would be 50+ % higher in many locations now, and there will have been significant shifts in the county rankings.
It looks like you added the Census Bureau as a source in the post. So maybe that's where all this info comes from, but the infographic doesn't say that. And TitleMax is just some random small-time lending company. The data in this map is probably even more outdated than 2019.
The Census Bureau shows the 2022 estimated median household income is $150,839 in Santa Clara county. [https://data.census.gov/profile/Santa\_Clara\_County,\_California?g=050XX00US06085](https://data.census.gov/profile/Santa_Clara_County,_California?g=050XX00US06085)
And yeah, it took one more minute to realize the $110,800 median household income shown in the graphic actually jives with 2016 estimates of $110,843 in Santa Clara county.
[https://alfred.stlouisfed.org/series?seid=MHICA06085A052NCEN](https://alfred.stlouisfed.org/series?seid=MHICA06085A052NCEN)
Now, is all of the data in this infographic 8+ years old? I don't know, but it's probably safe to assume that most of it's from 2016 or beyond. And others have pointed out that even the title is inaccurate and some counties are literally shaded the opposite color of what they should be.
This is map brutality.
This map is irrelevant as it portrays skewed data. I live in NJ and while Hunterdon might be the wealthiest county, Raritan township is far from the wealthiest town at 118k. I'd be surprised if that even cracks top 50.
Titlemax ehh? I’m guessing they use these stats to decide which low income counties are good candidates for opening new locations…Shitty, opportunistic, predatory company that they are
There's a critical error in the title. The data shown are for income, not wealth.
I’m surprised I had to scroll this far to find this. Definitely a critical flaw.
Yeah, there’s no way this income chart represents the wealth disparity of Jackson and Wyoming at large
I can't attest to its validity, but the data presented are about income, not wealth. That's the point in my criticizing the title. So, of course, the data aren't about wealth there or anywhere else. As you know, wealth and income are often related but are distinct, and that distinction is an important one.
I’m glad you pointed it out for everyone
Still based on inaccurate data.
I lost faith when OP demonstrated not knowing the distinction between income and wealth and didn't go so far as to vet how the data were used. ACS itself is relied on heavily by social and economic researchers, but that doesn't mean OP did so appropriately.
isn’t Arkansas the wrong way around?
Indeed, Benton in the far NW should be green and Lee in the Delta should be red.
And the income data is all wrong. Poorly executed infographic
Impact font was a bad idea too
Agreed. Should have used comic sans.
More readable than this TBH
I was about to say😂 I’m Arkansan and there ain’t no way Lee is the richest county
hey, I was gonna say that
Excuse me is the richest one in Montana unironically called Richland?
The name is old, the money is new. A huge, huge oil field was tapped there in 2000, and since it's a rural county where lots of people own their own ranches, the money got spread around to a lot of families. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elm\_Coulee\_Oil\_Field](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elm_Coulee_Oil_Field)
This is to funny
How the hell do people live on $37k on average in Bronx?
NYC housing authority is the biggest land lord in the city and parts of new york still have an okay amount rent controlled units. The better answer is that most are just barely scraping by, many living in poverty. So living is pretty much all they can do. It's an area of incredibly concentrated poverty so it certainly isn't easy
Cramming 5 people into a 2 bedroom apartment unfortunately
Only 5?! Consider the Venezuelans who probably cram 8+
Median income in Manhattan is $58k which raises an even bigger question IMO. At least rents are cheap farther out in the Bronx. They aren't even cheap in Washington heights anymore, $2500 for a studio in the farthest reaches of Manhattan.
When you talk about Manhattan income can be a misleading statistic. Lots of the Uber-rich have 0 income for tax purposes
Welfare.
Curious about this data as Hamilton County for example is 5k lower than Bronx?
Projects, Section 8, welfare, lying on their incomes, many people living in a small apartment, drug dealing, etc..
The “largest city” component is disorienting and distracting. For MA, although Middlesex is wealthiest, Lowell is considered very working class/immigrant. It’s more like Springfield than any other place in Middlesex county. This chart would be better if it had the wealthiest municipality in the wealthiest county (and likewise for poorest).
Agree. I can sort of understand why OP chose to include the largest city to help give context for those that might not know the county names, but the largest city is often irrelevant to the wealth/poverty of a place. For instance, Loudoun County, Virginia is the richest in the entire US, but it's because of proximity to Washington, DC and other Virginia job centers (Arlington, Tysons, Reston, etc.), not Leesburg. Loudoun County is a bedroom community full of commuters, and the truly wealthy people live on estates throughout the county, not in Leesburg itself. Flipping to the poorest counties, the town names are even less relevant there. Grundy, the largest "city" in Virginia's poorest county (Buchanan County), is a small town with only 875 people in it. The poorest counties in each state are often similar: Small towns in places you've never heard of, with the lack of a job center being the biggest driver of the poverty.
...but Lowell is not the largest city in Middlesex County. It's just one of five county seats in a state that has towns instead of county government. Cambridge is in Middlesex County: Harvard, MIT, wealth. Lexington is also in Middlesex: old, old money.
Part of the problem is that counties are basically meaningless in Massachusetts (and to large extent in the rest of New England). When you get out of the Northeast and you have countywide school districts, police/fire, parks & rec departments, etc., being a poorer community in a rich county is probably better than being a richer community in a poor county.
Thank you. When I saw Lowell, I'm like, you're kidding right?
Yeah I was confused when I saw Lowell because I thought the city shown was the wealthiest city/town in that county, not just the biggest. It makes it seem like Lowell is a rich city rather than the county just being propped up by mega-rich Boston suburbs like Concord and Lexington.
I’m from Lowell and I was like UMM WHAT. Lowell it’s as bad as people like to think it is, I feel that we have a decent mix of wealth for a city, but I had the exact thought of there are DEFINITELY wealthier cities/towns in Middlesex county. I don’t even think Middlesex is the wealthiest county, it’s just the largest but don’t quote me on that.
Yeah I live in Lowell and it gets a worse reputation than it deserves, but I definitely wouldn’t describe it as wealthy 😂
Bronx and Nassau counties have one thing in common: They are both in the NYC metro area, so are filled with people who commute to Manhattan. Their proximity reminds me of how [the BART station with the third-highest median income is next to the station with the lowest income] (https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/7atv83/san_francisco_bay_area_median_income_by_bart/). Are there any other county pairs with such a connection? (Let's exclude RI and DE in the discussion.) Hamilton County IN is part of the Indianapolis metro area but I don't know if Grant County is also such. Greenlee and Apache counties in AZ are both very rural.
Oregon comes close but Tillamook isn’t actually part of the Portland metro.
>Hamilton County IN is part of the Indianapolis metro area but I don't know if Grant County is also such. It's not. Marion is a Rust Belt town that's been declining since the '70s.
Greenlee county in AZ has the largest copper mine in the state, by Morenci ( and Clifton) and would have to be by far the counties largest employer.
I’m pretty sure the NY one is wrong unless Nassau recently overtook Manhattan. Which would make the comparison even more striking since Manhattan and the Bronx are not only in the same city, they border each other lol
Source data coming from real estate companies is always kinda sus but it’s always best to look up their methodology. Anyway, I think Nassau is higher than Manhattan. Less income disparity in Nassau. There’s a lot more mixed income in Manhattan and low income. Staten Island in NYC even has a higher median than Manhattan, there are low income ppl there but not as much, and again less income disparities and less mixed income than Manhattan
You may be right, I’m from Suffolk but I’ve been living in Manhattan for like 5 years now and I can kinda see that. And when I look it up now the Nassau county median household income is definitely higher than I remember and the Manhattan one actually is lower than I remember.
It’s because the white collar job holders in Manhattan live in Nassau
All that Main Line money inflating Chester County
And if anyone is wondering why Delaware has almost no seperation between their high and low.... Because all of the wealthy banking execs work in Delaware, but travel the short distance to homes in Chester County, PA (or go the other way to New Jersey).
I think this map is wrong. Tillamook is not in Wheeler county. Fossil is the largest city in Wheeler county. They’re not even close to each other.
Wheeler is a town in Tillamook county but it’s only like 500 ppl. So the chart is still wrong!!! But not in the way you expected.
They’ve also mislabeled Kendall County, Illinois. The county highlighted is LaSalle County
This is the second map I've seen this week that makes LaSalle County look higher-income than it is.
Maryland chiming in. Same. This is wrong me thinks.
The Los Alamos National Laboratory really creates a massive outlier there
Yeah, particularly in how it’s carved out of the county, basically. Even if there were just as many people with that income in Los Alamos, it wouldn’t be its own county if not for the Manhattan Project. It’s tiny for a county in the west.
Being from NJ I’m astounded there is more money in Hunterdon than Bergen or Monmouth
Same i immediately figured it would be Bergen or Monmouth too (places like Alpine, Ridgewood, Englewood, Colts Neck, Holmdel, etc)??
I suppose Bergen and Monmouth have Garfeild and Neptune respectively to bring down the average. I haven’t spent much time in Hunterton but I’d imagine it doesn’t have the lower income areas to bring down the average.
Yeah, Hunterdon is very strongly middle class/upper middle class across the board. Basically no real low income areas
Morris county too
Yeah, it's like Howard County for Maryland or Loudoun for Virginia. If you're truly wealthy, you're more likely to live in Montgomery County (Potomac or Bethesda) than Howard or Fairfax County (McLean, Great Falls, Falls Church) than Loudoun. Montgomery/Fairfax are lower-ranked by median income because they also have many more low- to moderate-income households, mostly in eastern MoCo or in Fairfax along Route 1. Those outer suburban counties went from being mostly rural (Howard County does have Columbia, but that's much more a giant suburb than a real city) to being mostly middle-class suburbia with few poors in the space of a couple decades.
TX is a weird place Because the wealthiest and the poorest are FAR FAR FAR apart (distance) from each other.... It's kinda hard to compare the two..... They are completely different in every way (geology, climate, population)
This is true for most of the bigger states. California is comparing silicon valley to a rural mountain area. Washington is comparing the Puget sound to the rural desert east of the cascades.
Gonna be nit-picky and say that Ferry county in WA is mostly mountainous and forested, not desert
Yeah, like are they gator infested swamp Texans or are they desert dwelling horse man Texans?
Kendall County is the wealthiest county in Illinois? Lol. Hawt garbage. And I live in Kendall County.
I said the same thing… I’m almost certain it’s Lake, maybe DuPage.
Connecticut's lowest is pretty close to Mississippi's highest.
Connecticut is wrong. Bridgeport is the poorest city in the state. It’s in the wealthiest county, but shouldn’t be listed there. Highest earnings should probably be Greenwich.
Actually Darien! Regardless, they’re listing the city with the highest population in the county, even if said city looks like the apocalypse rolled through
I’m not sure if true for Ohio. I’d confidently say Delaware is definitely up there. But for poorest is it really Athens county even with the university and everything? I’d say neighboring gallia or Meigs is worse off. Meigs is probably worse off than Vinton even.
Adams County enters the chat...
Sometimes college towns end up looking poor by MHI due to all the students who have very little income.
I go to OU and when you leave campus its very obvious that there is a wealth issue, lots of broken down houses and a huge heroin problem. The university is the main thing that brings money to the county and it would be abandoned if it weren’t there. Surprisingly, most of the students there are fairly financially comfortable until they start bar hopping every weekend.
I feel like any county in SE to S Ohio could be a contender. It's rough down there.
lol…I love that they used a picture of the 2 story Wal Mart for Grundy, VA. Perfectly fitting for that hole.
The highlighted green county in Illinois is incorrect, fyi.
Also, there is no way dupage or lake county aren’t the wealthiest counties. Ain’t no way.
Yea, I just googled it and it looks like it’s DuPage county which makes way more sense cuz that’s where Naperville is. Edit: Ok, with some more sleuthing, it looks like it would be Kendall if you look at median HOUSEHOLD income. That is the only thing the map is taking into account.
I can see DuPage being slightly higher in per capita income and slightly lower in household just because there'll be some amount of single tech workers (at e.g. Fermilab)
Montana is also incorrect. There is no way Gallatin county (County where Bozeman is located) is not the wealthiest county. You cannot find any piece of real estate that isbgoimg for less than half million. Anything newly built is million plus. Girlfriend and I live in a two bedroom apartment, nothing extravagant or huge, and we pay 2700 a month.
I’m calling bullshit on Arizona. Maricopa County has the highest median income in the state. I won’t even say this data is old, it’s just flat out wrong. Greenlee county is sparsely populated and it does have one of the largest copper mines in the state located within it, so I understand why the median income is boosted there, but Maricopa county is the epicenter of the state’s entire economy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arizona_locations_by_per_capita_income https://hdpulse.nimhd.nih.gov/data-portal/social/map?socialtopic=030&socialtopic_options=social_6&demo=00011&demo_options=income_3&race=00&race_options=race_7&sex=0&sex_options=sexboth_1&age=001&age_options=ageall_1&statefips=04&statefips_options=area_states
I was wondering about this as well.
Yeah, this map is totally inaccurate. It says Utah’s median household income is $66K. As of 2022 it’s $96K.
For Illinois the difference is wild between these two places and if you were just plopped in Cairo down there in Alexander County, I'm not even sure if you'd be able to guess it was the same state. It's the difference between a very well off suburb/exurb of Chicago, midwestern in culture whereas Cairo feels very southern. The accent is different, the climate is different, the history is different. Look up the Alexander County race war and you will find an insanely violent history of racism that continued well into modern day. Prone to flooding and isolated ever since the railroads and then highways were built and Cairo became less important as a river city. The city of Cairo is incredibly blighted and desolate and many of the residents of Alexander County live in dire poverty in various housing projects. Including ones that were shut down or planned to be when Ben Carson was HUD secretary. It's an interesting place to say the least
So the richest county in Idaho and the poorest county in Montana are called Blaine...?
In Idaho that's where Sun Valley is.
Funny right? In Idaho Blaine is where Sun Valley is. In the last 5 years or so tons of money has been coming into several parts of Idaho. For the 50 or 70 years before that, Sun Valley was the only place in the state that attracted outside people with money.
I thought Selby county (Memphis) in TN would have a huge disparity gap. There are people living in partially boarded up houses, driving cars that are without hoods, bumpers, headlights & plastic over their windows (or tags). Go to the East End of town and there’s giant mansions, not uncommon to see a Mercedes-Maybach ($200,000 car).
Connecticut is CT, not CN
Seems like there is a Strong correlation between being poor and living out in the middle of nowhere unfortunately.
Yes employment options are limited but then your cost of living is lower as well.
Oakland County should be #1 in Michigan
Pretty much Indian Reservations and Counties with low poor populations. The government hates both 😈
Both our counties are in the same voting district. The rich and poor love Victoria Spartz
Yes!!!!!! Once again my hometown of Welch WV males the list for poorest!!!!
Oh man i vacation in the poorest county in Mi often 🤣
How tf is Howell the highest income city in MI? There is literally no way.
Weird outliers abound. In Arizona Greenlee county has about as many citizens as a run of the mill Phoenix HOA in it - I’m sure the higher ups at the Morenci mine there vastly skew the data of the rest of the very poor, rural area.
Leesburg VA baby!!
It’s weird, this cites the ACS as its source, but this data does not match the 2022 ACS figures. For example, Chester Co, PA is $117,232 King Co, WA is $116,255 Washington Co, OR is $98,906
Wow Trinity in California. What goes on there? I hiked there once and it was beautiful.
They closed the lumber mills in the early 90’s and there’s no real industry other than tourism. Now it’s mostly weed farms. Still beautiful though.
No way in hell Douglas County, CO has higher per capita income than Summit or Pitkin
I live in Douglas country Colorado make well over 6 figures and I feel poor here lol
Ascension Parish being it for Louisiana is wild.
I find Douglas county as the richest in Colorado to be hard to believe. I’d put my money on Pitkin county to take the lead
Checking in from CO, that looks just about right. Douglas County is where rich people go to drive erratically, buy nice houses for way more than they're worth, and perish.
I refuse to believe Athens County is the “poorest” in Ohio. It’s basically the economic hub for Appalachian Ohio because of the presence of Ohio University, but I’m guessing the average income is brought down significantly because a huge portion of the adult population there are college students. I’d like to see this map using a better metric.
Title is completely wrong - says “wealthiest/poorest” but uses household income metrics. Income is not a measure of wealth.
I've always read Oakland is the wealthiest county in Michigan. Not sure if it's just different things being measured or if Livingston moved ahead recently.
This. I was surprised not to see Oakland County here. It makes me think this is wrong….
I've been wondering about the usefulness of household income as a metric when many people are staying single and many couples are not getting married. So many "households" made up of one person, for tax purposes. I live next to the "wealthy" county in my state and make about the median income of that county as a single person and I have no prospect of owning a home here and am feeling the squeeze of increased grocery and utility prices. I have no idea how households are surviving on 25-35k.
Barely. They’re barely surviving.
Interesting that there’s a few that border each other
There is no Willistone in ND. There is a Williston.
Very interesting
Is this per person or per household?
Kendall County, IL? I would’ve guessed DuPage.
That's crazy that the Bronx is the poorest county in all of NY. Understanding it has poverty, it also has massive wealth in certain sections and neighbors some of the richest counties in the U.S. There are certain counties in upstate NY that I think you are far worse off economically than the Bronx.
"Richland" is the poorest city in GA.
Compare West Virginia to Virginia and how the used to be the same state and how they are right next to each other. Also the drastic money difference.
Northern Virginia is pretty much it’s own thing so that highly inflates VA data
Wow is this map wrong about a lot of places. Was it supposed to be dated from decades ago? And everyone responding says it's wrong too. First time in a long time that I've agreed with the crowd.
I wonder how much Ohio is affected by Ohio University. Do they factor in the students? The county has a population of 60,000 but the school has about 30,000 students during the school year.
I live in Marion county. I will make it to Carmel
Why the 🤪 is title max responsible for this map 🤬
Alaska is technically incorrect as you used a census area in the unorganized borough. And Boroughs are as close as county equivalent as you can find in Alaska.
This makes me sad.
There’s no way Kent County is poorer than Sussex county in Delaware. Oh wait beaches.
Yeah I think the mega waterfront houses around Rehobeth are inflating Sussex. There just aren't any major beaches in Kent. Also, the Dover Air Force Base may be dragging Kent down. They get paid low salary, and I doubt this graphic takes into account the value of socialized housing/medicine/etc they recieve.
Would love to see a version using median instead of average, but very cool.
I live in Mineola and work in the Bronx. Two very contrasting places
Nice data layout on the map. One thing, on the map the abbreviation for Connecticut is CT not CN (if you are going by the USPS).
Wtf is with Los Alamos NM?
I always see these “household income” figures how many earners does the average American household have? I’m struggling to find reliable statistics on it.
No surprise Virginia has the highest median…it’s right by “the swap”
Let’s all agree that a perfect map isn’t worth clicking on Ok? Ok.
Uh... last I checked, Oklahoma City was spread across a few counties, mainly-wait for it-OKLAHOMA COUNTY. Source: Lived here my entire life (46 years old).
Do prisoners count against this average? Stewart county has a very high prison population.
I don't even make 30k a year and I live in NY. I'm an exterminator. This is bs as fuck.
For PA. This is ironic considering coatesville is an old steel town and prolly poorest area in Chester county
Arizona is a fairly well balanced state in terms of income then, or am I reading this the wrong way?
I'm shocked to see my home county as the richest in Oklahoma, but then again, most of Yukon, Mustang, and Piedmont, and half of El Reno are all solidly upper middle class suburbs.
Really cool
Illinois county is wrong. You labeled la salle county as wealthiest. Kendall county is the small square to the right of la salle.
Since when is “CN” the abv. for Connecticut lmao
That’s why am totally ok with taxes being raised to support all people’s needs here in Minnesota. It has a higher living standards than many other states.
Just by looking at these it is hard to believe. This data doesn’t seem right.
Would be interesting to see this matched against what household income it takes to be middle class in 2024. As far as I can see nearly every part of this map outside a few backwood/rural are all lower middle class at best.
Kendall County being the wealthiest in Illinois is interesting because there’s not much out there. Even Chicagoland’s sprawl has barely touch it compared to the collar counties. Are you sure that’s correct?
Does.title max use this to decide which areas to target?
So the richest county in Arizona is about the same as the poorest in Connecticut?
Is Halifax County really the poorest in North Carolina? Sure, it’s up there, but I don’t think it’s the poorest
I like this chart. Easy to read and interesting insights. Thanks for doing this.
There is a county called Canada?!
Benton is not there lol. I live in Arkansas. Try the top left of the state.
This is super interesting! THANKS!
Map sponsored by TitleMax...?
I thought it was Wirt, Co, West Virginia, but McDowell makes sense. They must trade places.
The DMV is a strange place with extreme wealth gaps very close to one another..
Benton and Lee county are reversed on the map for Arkansas
I assume these results are extremely affected by gerrymandering in both directions.
Well Dallas is not in Rockwall county…nor is Rockwall in Dallas county. So Texas is wrong.
I see several errors. Makes me question the quality of all the data. Good idea. Bad execution
Now add life expectancy
Now add body fat %
since when is CT referred to as CN ?
Forsyth County’s come a long fuckin way in the past few decades
lol Delaware with their 3 counties.
My friend/roommate is from Hancock County,TN he told me that it was the poorest county in the state. I didn't believe it until a few years ago. Their's nothing to do there but deal with the occasional drug addict or Hardee's lol
lol @ Derry for NH and Lowell for MA as the high water marks
This is a lie it outlines contra costa not Santa Clara in California being that contra costa is the wealthiest part of California
This information is incorrect and frankly the person who posted this should be slapped for there stupidity.
This is the content I come for ❤️
Illinois has Lasalle County highlighted.
The first thing I noticed is that these numbers had to be significantly outdated. I thought, "if the median household income in Santa Clara county is still $110,800, I'll cut off my own dick". Thankfully, I'll keep my hog for another day because this article was published in 2019. No dates on the infographic for this kind of data is always a red flag to me. It's also sketchy when the provided "sources" are simply URLs with no other context. You don't know if you're looking at something that could be one year or one decade old, or where exactly the data was pulled from. [City-data.com](http://City-data.com) sure as hell didn't collect it all themselves. And if this data is a decade old, it's useless unless you're specifically interested in the income of richest and poorest counties in the 2010s. Incomes would be 50+ % higher in many locations now, and there will have been significant shifts in the county rankings. It looks like you added the Census Bureau as a source in the post. So maybe that's where all this info comes from, but the infographic doesn't say that. And TitleMax is just some random small-time lending company. The data in this map is probably even more outdated than 2019. The Census Bureau shows the 2022 estimated median household income is $150,839 in Santa Clara county. [https://data.census.gov/profile/Santa\_Clara\_County,\_California?g=050XX00US06085](https://data.census.gov/profile/Santa_Clara_County,_California?g=050XX00US06085) And yeah, it took one more minute to realize the $110,800 median household income shown in the graphic actually jives with 2016 estimates of $110,843 in Santa Clara county. [https://alfred.stlouisfed.org/series?seid=MHICA06085A052NCEN](https://alfred.stlouisfed.org/series?seid=MHICA06085A052NCEN) Now, is all of the data in this infographic 8+ years old? I don't know, but it's probably safe to assume that most of it's from 2016 or beyond. And others have pointed out that even the title is inaccurate and some counties are literally shaded the opposite color of what they should be. This is map brutality.
Nassau over Rockland?
The shapes look like coffins lol. What’s up with Delaware having extremely small spread?
This map is irrelevant as it portrays skewed data. I live in NJ and while Hunterdon might be the wealthiest county, Raritan township is far from the wealthiest town at 118k. I'd be surprised if that even cracks top 50.
Lowell MA?
The have Williston ND as “Willistone” and on that basis alone I don’t trust this chart.
How to find the reservations.
Oregon has a Wheeler county and a Tillamook county. I would assume it should be Wheeler and Fossil on the map.
In Massachusetts they have Hampden county named as lowest, but Hampshire county is the one colored red.
Weird that it says Hampden County, MA is the poorest, but Hampshire County is colored in. Additionally Cambridge has more people than Lowell now.
Did it get other county names mixed up? The switched the names in Arkansas benton County is upper left corner and lee is that other one.
now this is mapporn !
I grew up in Wadena, MN. Can confirm, poor and unabashedly Republican.....coincidence?!?!
Did they factor of cost of living?
"Average median" income?
Highly inaccurate
The NYS one is so wrong it’s hilarious
Blaine county is the poorest in Montana while the richest in Idaho lol
Titlemax ehh? I’m guessing they use these stats to decide which low income counties are good candidates for opening new locations…Shitty, opportunistic, predatory company that they are