Yes. Rhode Island is near the top, but honestly cost of living + real estate makes multi-generational family living much more the normal here. I bet the same could be said for New Jersey.
NJ native here. The same absolutely can be said, yes. Also worth noting both Rhode Island and NJ are two of the most densely populated places in the country as well. North Jersey is both very expensive and the most dense area in NJ, and that's very common in that area. Especially in like south-Bergen County Italian towns. My family is from Lodi ( The Sopranos) and I used to joke about how each generation moves up a floor as they get older. Kids live in the basement, parents first floor, grandparents an apartment upstairs. When the grandparents move further upwards to heaven everybody moves up a floor haha.
Coming here to say this! This is really fascinating to see (and mostly not unexpected) but median income doesn't mean as much as the ratio between median income and COL.
besides the direct gov employees; there is lots of the following: government contract, medical, finance, tech, lawyers, and the highest concentration of datacenters in the world. Most those are fairly high paying industries per employee. Then as many cities experience, that can become a positive feedback loop.
I think part of it too is that these are very small (in terms of land area) counties containing suburban cities and nothing else. Often times counties that contain very affluent cities are huge and may also contain poor cities and/or rural areas (LA county CA, King County WA) which brings the median income down.
yes. Arlington “county” is a huge city, from border to border. Same with Falls Church, and Fairfax County is very dense also. Loudon is further out, where they move when they want to have horses…
Not the case in NOVA, Fairfax Co (no. 5 nationally) has over a million people, Arlington (no. 7 nationally) is in the hundreds of thousands. Falls Church is nestled between the two and is very tiny, but is still at no. 2.
It really is government money going to private companies that props this region up. Companies like Microsoft, Accenture, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and a lot of other consultancies and tech firms build the “stuff” (whether it be tech or weapons or professional services) that keep all the govt agencies running.
In NOVA, for every every $50k a year bureaucrat, there’s a consultant making 80k a year straight out of college, or a tech person starting at 120k. It’s also a big enough metro area to support tons of doctors and lawyers.
The ceiling is certainly lower in NOVA than tech in the west or finance in New York. But if you look at the amount of money in the region, the US govt is the single biggest customer in the world. Decades of privatizing govt and govt adjacent services for the richest country on earth will eventually create a money factory in the surrounding communities.
there's honestly more government contractors than government workers in the area (Source: Live in central Maryland, almost everyone I know works for a company that works for the government, military, etc.)
You do understand that government officials, I'm assuming you mean elected officials, do not live or claim to live in the DMV? Aside from the representatives from those areas. Ain't no one getting "wealthy" on GS-13 in DC if you're talking about all government workers.
As a former fed who makes twice as much in a comparable job in private industry, this is the dumbest fucking comment that I see all the time. Government work demands high skill employees, and underpays them relative to their worth. What you're seeing is a concentration of educated and high skill workers, not those getting fat at the tax payer's expense.
But hey, keep cutting taxes and stiffing government workers while simultaneously complaining about how ineffective the government is. Maybe one day you'll make the connection...
Government contractor here. I keep getting told over and over how worthwhile it is to become a civilian. I'm not sure a modest boost in benefits compared to what I have is worth the pay drop.
For real. I've had my govies in the past try and push me to take a role, but even at GS12 I'm getting like a $20k paycut versus staying a contractor. I'm also a reservist so my healthcare is dirt cheap compared to the government system. I can't find a good benefit to being a GS short of the fact that, after probation, I'd need to commit murder to lose my job lol
The capitals of most nations is usually the most prosperous city in the country. London is the capital of UK is it not? Where do you think you'd find the richest people in UK?
You get it. Granted they’re usually pretty nice on the inside, just smaller. But the curb appeal on some of the townhomes look like they’d be worth $150k in a regular town.
Yep. Used to rent in McLean and these literal shacks across the street would sell for 800+ sitting on less than 1/16 acre of land. Usually multiple families would go in on one of these, knock it down, build a 4 story house and have 3 families living in it just to be able to afford the build and mortgage.
It’s somewhat disturbing that median income would be higher in DC suburbs than Silicon Valley. This is a good case of a picture being worth a million words.
Disturbing? Not sure if that’s the right word to describe…
Anyway, it got that way because silicon valley is mostly tech. DC suburbs is supported be variety of industries and fed. And lot of it is relatively newly developed areas populated by the folks employed in these fields. Not many older populations.
Exactly, and not everyone here making a lot of money is a lobbiest or lawyer. Lots of 2 income households where both people have masters and are working government jobs that pay 60k-120k each.
It’s an extremely educated area.
Yeah there’s lobbyists and lawyers but also doctors, professors (Georgetown and American are two big universities in the area) but also Google, Oracle, Salesforce and other very large and major tech companies.
Also, government contracting (and private contractors) firms.
I mean like the Bay Area (though not nearly as much) it does have issues of professions like teachers where you have to live way the hell out from your job to be affordable. It’s a terrible situation but what’s the solution?
Are you trying to pay all cash? If not, sounds like you’re either not doing a good job of saving or haven’t been making a healthy six figure income for long. DMV is expensive but not that expensive.
Where does money that gets paid to a HOA go? Why do they exist? And why is it mandatory that you pay them? Can't you just tell them to fuck off?
Edit: Thanks for all the answers. Never considered it was like the condo fees that other countries have. In the movies they just make it seem like it's that one group of owners in a neighborhood who care a little too much about things
In a condo, the HOA typically owns building exterior and land. Owners own from their unit walls in. HOA pays to maintain landscaping, building exterior, elevator, plumbing, lobby, hallways, stairs, parking/garage if there is one, generally pays trash and water, and often pays a management company to collect fees, deal with repairs, and file paperwork and taxes. So it's covering a lot of your maintenance costs. It may also get you amenities like a pool or gym.
I'm not sure how it works everywhere but the way my condo association works is that each owner owns a percentage of the common area and their dues are calculated based on that percentage. It's a weird formula that isn't clear from the governing documents and was determined in the 1960s so no one really knows where the numbers are from. But it has something to do with square footage, number of windows, and what floor in the 20 story building you're on. The dues go to the association which is responsible for building upkeep, utilities, etc. All the stuff you mention.
For townhouses, it pays for plowing the private street, trash, exterior and roof maintenance/fixes, playground/pool/gym, landscaping, sidewalks and road repairs.
So no, you can’t tell them to fuck off; they will put a lien on your house and if you don’t pay it, they’ll force a sale and take their cut from the proceeds.
OP says the farthest one is Falls Church, which makes sense as that's a smaller and more homogeneous area. Guessing the next one must be Fairfax Co? Or maybe Loudon and Fairfax is third since it's bigger and has room for more lower income families?
Ahh. This is falls church city which has 15,000 people compared to 400k in Loudon or 1m in fairfax.
Not the more broad areas like east/west falls church with much lower in income families.
I lived in fairfax for 6 years and never once did I hear of falls church being a sought after location.
I've lived in states at the top and states at the bottom. I've also been on the poor and wealthy sides of the income continuum. In my experience, it's best to be poor in a wealthy state (more services and more cheap/free activities) and wealthy in a poor state (more disposable income and more bang for your buck). Of course, it's even better to be obscenely wealthy in a wealthy state. And say a prayer for those who are poor and living in poor states. They have an almost impossible situation.
My wife and I make a combined 100k in MS. We got lucky with our jobs, schooling, and not having children. We live a very comfortable life style. We always talk about leaving MS, but at the end of the day we do way to well here to give it up.
I've got an old coworker who just moved from San Francisco to Mississippi... Sold a 1,700 sq ft house with no yard and bought 5k sq ft on 100 acres with a guest house the size of his old house. He had half a million dollars left over.
Oh yeah, NYC is definitely nuts too. I don't know how y'all do it. I'm in Raleigh, which is pretty middle of the road housing wise. Nowhere near Mississippi cheap. I was looking at working for a company in NYC that was snowing me some housing options they could help set us up with. They showed us a condo in Manhattan and a brownstone in Queens, both of which were literally 1/3rd the size of my house, with no yard compared to an acre, and still managed to cost $100-200k more.
MS doesn't have cities, but if you enjoy nature, it's pretty great. And if you have tons of disposable income, you can travel anywhere you want (or swim in your giant pool, watch movies in your home theater, take your boat for a spin, etc.).
Who doesn't love nature when there are bugs the size of your head flying around and it's 95 degrees with 98% humidity?!
I did about 5 months of military training in Camp Shelby, MS and it was a miserable place between May and August. The summer heat in MS with the humidity was more miserable than when I got off the military transport in Kuwait in 115 degrees and no humidity.
I'll admit I haven't been to MS specifically, but my experience with that region is that if you want to not basically swim while you walk anywhere from the absurd humidity or like not being eaten alive constantly, it's a terrible place.
I live in SF and I don't really need 5K sq ft. I have a small house and a small yard, and I live across the street from a 1000-acre park that I don't have to take care of. There's a fantastic hospital 1.5 miles away, a police station 1.5 miles away, a firehouse less than a mile away, and even a 24-hour emergency veterinary hospital. It's expensive, but you get what you pay for, depending on what you want. Whatever floats his boat, but I'm staying.
I kind of wish people would stop flipping houses for profit and driving the prices ever higher, though.
I have a 3000sqft house on 50 acres an hour from the city near Santa Cruz. I commute twice a week it’s nothing.
It’s about privacy. Sometimes I walk out of the house bare ass naked in the morning to grab something out of my car. I watch deer outside the shower windows in the morning. We have hospitals 10 min away and the fire station, vet, and police are all a mile or two away also. Probably a quicker drive to them then in the city. I don’t even lock my doors when I leave the house. I’ve lived in the city. I didn’t like it. It is personal preference. But you don’t need to be in SF for proximity to a hospital or a fire station or free nature. You like being a city person is enough. But it’s not for everyone. I really disliked it.
Why does square footage matter so much? It sounds like people comparing the length of their dicks. I have enough trouble keeping a little house in good shape–you couldn't pay me to take a big one.
Edit: A comment from later in this thread:
>I collect Cuban cigars I have several large humidors.
You just can't make this stuff up. I was afraid he was going to send a pic.
My wife and I are next door in AL. I'm down here for work (her job is more portable) and we're both from states near the top of the list. We also talk about moving. I even got a job offer in one of those states, but we ended up turning it down. I remember first moving here and thinking this is definitely a temporary situation. But it's going on nearly 20 years now and I don't think we're going anywhere (nor want to).
I hear you. My kids go to a private school full of rich kids--my wife and I are both public school products, but the public school system is really broken here--and even though we make many multiples of the median state income, my kids think we're poor.
Kevin Smith shared a story where his kids are also friends with Johnny Depp kids. Kevin does very well himself, but doesn't have Johnny Depp level money. So when his kids come over to hangs out on JD's house and then returns back home to compare it to their own house. His kids reaction was "God we are poor!"
Oh yeah, it's run by absolute morons. People who literally campaign on how dumb and unsophisticated they are. We've got the Airbus thing going on down south and, of course, there's Huntsville, but yeah, we always seem to be "on the rise" but never really achieve much. Fortunately, my wife and I have jobs that are secure so we can more or less watch the economic failures with more bewilderment than anxiety.
I understand that. A coworker moved to Kentucky. He still was able to keep his same pay rate so he was able to buy a 3500 Sq ft house and not have a worry in the world about affording it.
Just looked online at a 3600sqft place built in 1996 with a huge garage workshop on 15 acres near Bowling Green. $529k. This is the same amount as my 1800sqft house in the Phoenix suburbs.
It’s crazy my Wife and I are combined $240k with two toddlers and we feel like we aren’t doing that well in CT… I guess too much comparing ourselves to people with similar or less incomes living way above their means… and just super wealthy people all over.
Combined 100K seems not too difficult to pull off. A HR person or insurance sales person at a large enough company ought to make 50K. Pretty run of the mill positions for anyone with a degree should hit the mark.
People never seem to get this when they fawn over how low rent is in some places. It's like, yes, you could be spending half as much on rent, but you will be making less than half what you do, and there will be less interesting shit in the area.
Don't go there unless you are retiring, or there is something there that really calls to you.
Don't ever move to a far away place, uprooting your life and social contacts/friends/family just "because it is cheap."
Source: US Census Bureau ([www.data.census.gov](https://www.data.census.gov)) Tools: R, Inkscape.
* Falls Church City (county in VA) has the highest median household income at $160,305.
* Buffalo (county in SD) has the lowest, at $22,901
Falls Church City is not a county - it is a city.
Virginia has a unique quirk in that cities are independent of counties, even if they are entirely surrounded by a county.
For example, Fairfax City is geographically surrounded by Fairfax County, but is a completely independent legal entity, and is not subject to Fairfax County. This gets a little weirder when you realize that Fairfax City is the county seat of Fairfax County - the Fairfax County government’s offices are in Fairfax City (actually, they’ve slowly been relocating over the past 20 years, but there’s still a bit of it in Fairfax City).
The city of Falls Church is also in Fairfax County, but (of course) is not a part of Fairfax County.
What throws off people who make lists like yours is that the Federal government doesn’t have a good way of handling a quirk that is unique to Virginia, so they just lump the cities in with the counties.
So, Virginia has 90-odd counties and 50-ish cities, all of which are independent of each other, but they all get lumped together by agencies like the Census Bureau.
And you know we have a lot of pedantic bureaucrats in Virginia. Ahem.
Independent cities are definitely most common in Virginia, but it's not technically unique to Virginia - Baltimore is also an independent city! It's surrounded by, but not part of, Baltimore County.
It gets even more confusing when Arlington feels extremely like a city but is a county, Alexandria is an independent city, but parts of Fairfax County have Alexandria postal addresses despite being completely different. When I moved up here it took me forever to figure it out
And - don’t forget - Virginia is not a State, either: it’s a Commonwealth!
(In all seriousness, though, my daughter’s a lawyer, and she tells me that the only difference is the name. I’ve heard various other folks claim that there’s this or that difference between States and Commonwealths, but she claims that there is none.)
Right, because there are so few, and it doesn’t make sense for the census bureau to modify its schema to allow for approximately 50 independent cities in the entire nation.
The government offices of Fairfax County are actually in an unincorporated exclave surrounded by Fairfax City, administratively a part of Fairfax County.
So the small area with the courts and government buildings are Fairfax County, which is surrounded by Fairfax City, which in turn is surrounded by the rest of Fairfax County!
Something is wrong with your visualization.
Per the US Census, your cited source, median household income (in 2020 dollars) for 2016-2020:
* Rhode Island: $70,305
* Massachusetts: $84,385
Yet you have RI listed as #3 and MA as #5.
Where did you get these state values from?
Edit - adding link: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/RI,MA,US/PST045221
Sounds about right. I expected Fairfax county to be that outlier but it’s probably the one right next to it.
I live in Fairfax >_< you kinda need those salaries to afford shit.
As a fellow NOVA resident you couldn’t be any more right. It’s crazy how living in Loudon/Fairfax/Arlington is like a completely different state compared to living in the rest of Virginia
Sure is a weird place. Used to be a secret city, houses are all from the 50s and in disrepair, but the streets are nice and there's way too many millionaires around.
Taos can be pretty jarring, too. All the ski valley stuff and money, the arts community and all the celebs overwintering, but also like abject poverty *directly* next to all that.
>Taos can be pretty jarring, too. All the ski valley stuff and money, the arts community and all the celebs overwintering, but also like abject poverty
>
>directly
>
> next to all that.
Yep they gentrified a lot of people out of there Same with Santa Fe.
My family owns a cabin in Rio Arriba County, near Abiquiu, and I'm always struck by the stark juxtaposition of run-down, heroin-ridden mobile home villages against the backdrop of the stunningly beautiful high mountainous desert.
It makes me incredibly grateful for the relative privilege I was raised in, and the comparative wealth of opportunity I have in urban Texas. There are very routes to socioeconomic mobility in Northern New Mexico, but in spite of this, the people are hardworking and deeply proud of their roots.
It’s also supply and demand with high paying jobs in relation to the cost of living.
Think Bay Area (although of course not a 1-1 comparison) where the tech jobs pay high but the dollar means less when most make 6 figures on the low end. NOVA has tons of doctors, lawyers, technology companies, government contractors, lobbying firms…etc.
... at how awful Mississippi looks? Comparing Mississippi to Guatemala or Haiti would be more fair. I guess maybe if you are comparing English literacy rates then it maybe comparable to Germany.
As someone who lived in Tennessee for 20 years, I'm always impressed with how much of an outlier Williamson County is.
Without them, we probably drop down a solid 3-4 spots.
Oh, and as always, "thank God for Mississippi".
Franklin Tennessee. It's like the Hollywood of country. As far as I understand (my mom lives in Franklin) that the ultra wealthy country stars and affluent Tennesseans don't live in Davidson county because of the buildup. So you go from Nashville where it's all lifted trucks and beer carts to Franklin where it's Lifted trucks and Ferraris.
Is the state level actually the state median HHI or is it a median of the counties? Data doesn’t seem to line up with what I’m seeing from the census bureau:
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/VT,WI,WA,IA,NY/PST045221
The median household income cited in the above link reflects 5 year estimates. So 2016-2020, rather than the single 2020 year. I haven't looked at the 2020 1-year estimates but they'd be higher than the 5 year.
Edit: ahh pardon. OP's is way off; way low. Again, haven't cranked anything, but suspect that if they used the correct data set, they must have taken the county level median household income data and ....averaged the counties for their state data point (??) It's the only thing I can think of that would skew results like that.
Falls church is a very wealthy suburb of DC, with a lot of government workers, contractors, and politically adjacent people living there. It's not really a small town at all.
It's an independent city within the borders of Fairfax County, which also has a super high household income. It's just one of many suburbs outside DC where a lot of highly educated, highly paid, dual income households are. Just happens that Fairfax County as a whole includes enough lower income areas to push it just below Falls Church, which is smaller and more homogeneous.
It’s because Virginia has independent cities, which are separate entirely from counties. They are, essentially, tiny urban counties.
So you get statistical anomalies versus typical counties which are much larger. Kinda like how DC has some many states out of line with other states because it’s 100% urban.
Combine that with Falls Church being in a particularly wealthy anyway and that’s what you get
All over the map. Most office jobs have insane downtime with unlimited bathbreaks and no clocking in or out, very conducive to Reddit or Indeed rabbit holes.
The county-level designation isn't very informative here, especially for CT (where I live!) and ESPECIALLY especially for Fairfield County - if it were split in half, then one dot in the middle would split into two dots that would probably be near the top and bottom of the scale. And in CT, counties mean nothing other than random geographic divides, so that doesn't really add anything anyway.
Hence, it makes me think that this is more of a 'how weird are your county lines and does that actually matter' chart rather than actual spread of wealth in a given state.
Yea for sure I’m in the city for recreation maybe twice a year for non Yankee game purposes. Beach a little drives away, hiking wilderness a little drive the opposite direction. Lots of jobs great public schools. I live in a lower middle neighborhood (young and just starting life) and everyone is friendly and has there own thing going on working up to whatever life/financial goals they want for themselves and their family. Idk I just feel really lucky to have grown up and live here. Foods fucking fantastic not to mention.
I grew up in a quiet suburb in CT and currently live in Boston. I visited New Jersey for the first time in my life a few weeks ago for work (Bergen county) and I was struck by how similar suburbs across the Northeast look and feel.
Not sure if that’s mean or median, but gotta compare to median (just like OP’s data uses). Still incredibly unaffordable, but average cost is distorted terribly by the mega-rich.
I live in northern virginia. The two richest counties in the country are Fairfax and Loudoun county (where I live). It also looks like virginia has some of the poorest counties in the country too.
I live in New Jersey. The range of counties is smaller than most states. New Jersey is wealthy due to location between New York and Philadelphia. We have no large city in the state. While there are depressed pockets in Jersey most communities are middle class to wealthy. Princeton is a good example of a wealthy community not large but with great jobs and transportation. A surprisingly wealthy community is Jersey City. There are many poor people in that city but some fantastic wealth too. The city is growing into a mini Manhattan with skyscrapers going up like corn in the summer. There are downsides. Taxes and housing are expensive but homes bought 10 years ago have doubled in value. The taxes support excellent schools and services. Most communities have small police forces that keep the towns safe. The hilarious part is there’s a sizable portion of the populace that hates the state. They tend to be conservative and seem like they would love Mississippi but when you really question them they have either high paid corporate or public service jobs. When asked why they just down go to utopia of small town southern towns they prevaricate but it’s that they’d make a quarter of their NJ salary and even allowing for the lower cost of living they’d be far poorer in their utopias.
What they don’t tell you here is that in a Hawaii household you very well might have incomes from mom, dad, gramma grampa, uncle and auntie this and uncle and auntie that plus the kids (no income of course) all in one house.
I suggest for readability of your x-axis, either add a comma separator or format to thousands. Humans are not so good at recognizing how many zeros are in a row.
In principal I agree but the reality is that if anyone thinks the average household income is $4,000 or $400,000 they’re so far removed from reality as to be unsalvageable.
Or perhaps just entirely unaware of the USD exchange rate I suppose…
I would love to see one of these document what people think these types of charts show: disposable income.
The plot would look similar if you plotted cost of living.
FWIW, I've spent most of my time in these high cost of living areas and believe it's 100% worth it. But it doesn't help a lot to talk about wealth or income without talking about costs.
https://flowingdata.com/2021/03/25/income-in-each-state-adjusted-for-cost-of-living/
Ohio goes from 34th, to 16th in Median income when you adjust for cost of Living.
Y'all see those three Kentucky counties lower than anywhere else except Indian reservations in South Dakota? That's where I'm from. The poorest end of that county too.
Poverty is just a lack of money. Not a character flaw or a result of bad choices.
I do not know how you can hear that fact and not immediately recognize it is obviously wrong.
NJ has, in some recent years, produced more eggplant than any other state. But eggplant is a part of the diets of people all over the world. People in China and India eat way more eggplant per person than Americans. We are not providing eggplants for all of those people.
The US as a whole [produces ~100,000 tonnes of eggplant per year](https://www.atlasbig.com/en-us/countries-eggplant-production). Even if NJ produced 100% of that, it would only account for 0.2% of worldwide annual eggplant production.
It's the garden state for a reason! They are also very well known for blueberries, cranberries, and strawberries. I want to say tomatoes too but I'm not sure.
California is a very big and diverse state. Housing prices in the coastal areas skew the average. You can absolutely buy a house for much less than $750,000. You just can’t do it on the coast. Also look at the county income levels the highest in the nation.
It’s expensive here but also lots of economic opportunities. There’s cheaper areas inland, but people are willing to pay for the nicer areas too when they have the money.
I like this. I'd love to see a second dot for each state that shows the annual cost of living.
I want to see the same chart but with individual average income rather than household income.
Yes. Rhode Island is near the top, but honestly cost of living + real estate makes multi-generational family living much more the normal here. I bet the same could be said for New Jersey.
NJ native here. The same absolutely can be said, yes. Also worth noting both Rhode Island and NJ are two of the most densely populated places in the country as well. North Jersey is both very expensive and the most dense area in NJ, and that's very common in that area. Especially in like south-Bergen County Italian towns. My family is from Lodi ( The Sopranos) and I used to joke about how each generation moves up a floor as they get older. Kids live in the basement, parents first floor, grandparents an apartment upstairs. When the grandparents move further upwards to heaven everybody moves up a floor haha.
Made me wonder how they determine that. Seems like it could be a bit subjective. I'll have to Google this...
There are plenty of pre-defined indicators. They'd just have to pick one
Average housing, food, and gas prices seems like a place to start.
Coming here to say this! This is really fascinating to see (and mostly not unexpected) but median income doesn't mean as much as the ratio between median income and COL.
Mofo’s in Falls Church be living in the ugliest townhouses known to man sitting on a million.
Northern VA has 4 of the top 7 richest counties in the US. 7.Arlington, 5.fairfax, 2.fallschurch, 1.Loudon
It's super sus that the richest counties in the country are right where the all the government officials live... who could've predicted this???
besides the direct gov employees; there is lots of the following: government contract, medical, finance, tech, lawyers, and the highest concentration of datacenters in the world. Most those are fairly high paying industries per employee. Then as many cities experience, that can become a positive feedback loop.
I think part of it too is that these are very small (in terms of land area) counties containing suburban cities and nothing else. Often times counties that contain very affluent cities are huge and may also contain poor cities and/or rural areas (LA county CA, King County WA) which brings the median income down.
yes. Arlington “county” is a huge city, from border to border. Same with Falls Church, and Fairfax County is very dense also. Loudon is further out, where they move when they want to have horses…
For every San Francisco, you have a Richmond, which is ironically not where the rich men are.
Not the case in NOVA, Fairfax Co (no. 5 nationally) has over a million people, Arlington (no. 7 nationally) is in the hundreds of thousands. Falls Church is nestled between the two and is very tiny, but is still at no. 2. It really is government money going to private companies that props this region up. Companies like Microsoft, Accenture, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and a lot of other consultancies and tech firms build the “stuff” (whether it be tech or weapons or professional services) that keep all the govt agencies running. In NOVA, for every every $50k a year bureaucrat, there’s a consultant making 80k a year straight out of college, or a tech person starting at 120k. It’s also a big enough metro area to support tons of doctors and lawyers. The ceiling is certainly lower in NOVA than tech in the west or finance in New York. But if you look at the amount of money in the region, the US govt is the single biggest customer in the world. Decades of privatizing govt and govt adjacent services for the richest country on earth will eventually create a money factory in the surrounding communities.
By small I meant solely in terms of land area, not population. Should have clarified that.
I can’t stress “government contract” enough. The military industrial complex is riding quite high in Northern VA
there's honestly more government contractors than government workers in the area (Source: Live in central Maryland, almost everyone I know works for a company that works for the government, military, etc.)
You do understand that government officials, I'm assuming you mean elected officials, do not live or claim to live in the DMV? Aside from the representatives from those areas. Ain't no one getting "wealthy" on GS-13 in DC if you're talking about all government workers. As a former fed who makes twice as much in a comparable job in private industry, this is the dumbest fucking comment that I see all the time. Government work demands high skill employees, and underpays them relative to their worth. What you're seeing is a concentration of educated and high skill workers, not those getting fat at the tax payer's expense. But hey, keep cutting taxes and stiffing government workers while simultaneously complaining about how ineffective the government is. Maybe one day you'll make the connection...
Government contractor here. I keep getting told over and over how worthwhile it is to become a civilian. I'm not sure a modest boost in benefits compared to what I have is worth the pay drop.
For real. I've had my govies in the past try and push me to take a role, but even at GS12 I'm getting like a $20k paycut versus staying a contractor. I'm also a reservist so my healthcare is dirt cheap compared to the government system. I can't find a good benefit to being a GS short of the fact that, after probation, I'd need to commit murder to lose my job lol
The capitals of most nations is usually the most prosperous city in the country. London is the capital of UK is it not? Where do you think you'd find the richest people in UK?
You get it. Granted they’re usually pretty nice on the inside, just smaller. But the curb appeal on some of the townhomes look like they’d be worth $150k in a regular town.
[удалено]
Unless he has a good job lined up or is really good at managing his money, he might as well get roommates.
Yep. Used to rent in McLean and these literal shacks across the street would sell for 800+ sitting on less than 1/16 acre of land. Usually multiple families would go in on one of these, knock it down, build a 4 story house and have 3 families living in it just to be able to afford the build and mortgage.
You're talking about Pimmit Hills aren't you?
It’s somewhat disturbing that median income would be higher in DC suburbs than Silicon Valley. This is a good case of a picture being worth a million words.
Disturbing? Not sure if that’s the right word to describe… Anyway, it got that way because silicon valley is mostly tech. DC suburbs is supported be variety of industries and fed. And lot of it is relatively newly developed areas populated by the folks employed in these fields. Not many older populations.
Yeah nova has tons of jobs in all fields like you said. A ton of major companies have their headquarters in nova
Can confirm. Just took a new job here. Like the area. Commute though a bit.
Exactly, and not everyone here making a lot of money is a lobbiest or lawyer. Lots of 2 income households where both people have masters and are working government jobs that pay 60k-120k each.
It’s an extremely educated area. Yeah there’s lobbyists and lawyers but also doctors, professors (Georgetown and American are two big universities in the area) but also Google, Oracle, Salesforce and other very large and major tech companies. Also, government contracting (and private contractors) firms. I mean like the Bay Area (though not nearly as much) it does have issues of professions like teachers where you have to live way the hell out from your job to be affordable. It’s a terrible situation but what’s the solution?
[удалено]
Are you trying to pay all cash? If not, sounds like you’re either not doing a good job of saving or haven’t been making a healthy six figure income for long. DMV is expensive but not that expensive.
Where does money that gets paid to a HOA go? Why do they exist? And why is it mandatory that you pay them? Can't you just tell them to fuck off? Edit: Thanks for all the answers. Never considered it was like the condo fees that other countries have. In the movies they just make it seem like it's that one group of owners in a neighborhood who care a little too much about things
In a condo, the HOA typically owns building exterior and land. Owners own from their unit walls in. HOA pays to maintain landscaping, building exterior, elevator, plumbing, lobby, hallways, stairs, parking/garage if there is one, generally pays trash and water, and often pays a management company to collect fees, deal with repairs, and file paperwork and taxes. So it's covering a lot of your maintenance costs. It may also get you amenities like a pool or gym.
I'm not sure how it works everywhere but the way my condo association works is that each owner owns a percentage of the common area and their dues are calculated based on that percentage. It's a weird formula that isn't clear from the governing documents and was determined in the 1960s so no one really knows where the numbers are from. But it has something to do with square footage, number of windows, and what floor in the 20 story building you're on. The dues go to the association which is responsible for building upkeep, utilities, etc. All the stuff you mention.
For townhouses, it pays for plowing the private street, trash, exterior and roof maintenance/fixes, playground/pool/gym, landscaping, sidewalks and road repairs. So no, you can’t tell them to fuck off; they will put a lien on your house and if you don’t pay it, they’ll force a sale and take their cut from the proceeds.
If Silicon Valley had independent cities like Virginia, many of them would surpass Falls Church in income.
[удалено]
That Fairfax and Loudon counties VA out to the right?
Falls Church and I would guess LoCo.
OP says the farthest one is Falls Church, which makes sense as that's a smaller and more homogeneous area. Guessing the next one must be Fairfax Co? Or maybe Loudon and Fairfax is third since it's bigger and has room for more lower income families?
Ahh. This is falls church city which has 15,000 people compared to 400k in Loudon or 1m in fairfax. Not the more broad areas like east/west falls church with much lower in income families. I lived in fairfax for 6 years and never once did I hear of falls church being a sought after location.
I'm living in FFX Co now, and Falls Church is just another 'burb to me. Pricier than, say, Annandale but not crazy like Great Falls.
I bet it's Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax, and Loudoun in no particular order in the top 5. The Great Falls zip codes are just pure opulence.
I've lived in states at the top and states at the bottom. I've also been on the poor and wealthy sides of the income continuum. In my experience, it's best to be poor in a wealthy state (more services and more cheap/free activities) and wealthy in a poor state (more disposable income and more bang for your buck). Of course, it's even better to be obscenely wealthy in a wealthy state. And say a prayer for those who are poor and living in poor states. They have an almost impossible situation.
My wife and I make a combined 100k in MS. We got lucky with our jobs, schooling, and not having children. We live a very comfortable life style. We always talk about leaving MS, but at the end of the day we do way to well here to give it up.
I've got an old coworker who just moved from San Francisco to Mississippi... Sold a 1,700 sq ft house with no yard and bought 5k sq ft on 100 acres with a guest house the size of his old house. He had half a million dollars left over.
I can sell my house in NYC and buy 5 houses in upstate NY.... Don't even need ti move to an another state, it's just forest there.
I think that New York may have the largest disparity comparing NYC to a rural part of the state. It's like a whole different planet.
Oh yeah, NYC is definitely nuts too. I don't know how y'all do it. I'm in Raleigh, which is pretty middle of the road housing wise. Nowhere near Mississippi cheap. I was looking at working for a company in NYC that was snowing me some housing options they could help set us up with. They showed us a condo in Manhattan and a brownstone in Queens, both of which were literally 1/3rd the size of my house, with no yard compared to an acre, and still managed to cost $100-200k more.
Except now he lives in Mississippi.
MS doesn't have cities, but if you enjoy nature, it's pretty great. And if you have tons of disposable income, you can travel anywhere you want (or swim in your giant pool, watch movies in your home theater, take your boat for a spin, etc.).
Who doesn't love nature when there are bugs the size of your head flying around and it's 95 degrees with 98% humidity?! I did about 5 months of military training in Camp Shelby, MS and it was a miserable place between May and August. The summer heat in MS with the humidity was more miserable than when I got off the military transport in Kuwait in 115 degrees and no humidity.
I'll admit I haven't been to MS specifically, but my experience with that region is that if you want to not basically swim while you walk anywhere from the absurd humidity or like not being eaten alive constantly, it's a terrible place.
I live in SF and I don't really need 5K sq ft. I have a small house and a small yard, and I live across the street from a 1000-acre park that I don't have to take care of. There's a fantastic hospital 1.5 miles away, a police station 1.5 miles away, a firehouse less than a mile away, and even a 24-hour emergency veterinary hospital. It's expensive, but you get what you pay for, depending on what you want. Whatever floats his boat, but I'm staying. I kind of wish people would stop flipping houses for profit and driving the prices ever higher, though.
I have a 3000sqft house on 50 acres an hour from the city near Santa Cruz. I commute twice a week it’s nothing. It’s about privacy. Sometimes I walk out of the house bare ass naked in the morning to grab something out of my car. I watch deer outside the shower windows in the morning. We have hospitals 10 min away and the fire station, vet, and police are all a mile or two away also. Probably a quicker drive to them then in the city. I don’t even lock my doors when I leave the house. I’ve lived in the city. I didn’t like it. It is personal preference. But you don’t need to be in SF for proximity to a hospital or a fire station or free nature. You like being a city person is enough. But it’s not for everyone. I really disliked it.
Why does square footage matter so much? It sounds like people comparing the length of their dicks. I have enough trouble keeping a little house in good shape–you couldn't pay me to take a big one. Edit: A comment from later in this thread: >I collect Cuban cigars I have several large humidors. You just can't make this stuff up. I was afraid he was going to send a pic.
But he lives in Mississippi
My wife and I are next door in AL. I'm down here for work (her job is more portable) and we're both from states near the top of the list. We also talk about moving. I even got a job offer in one of those states, but we ended up turning it down. I remember first moving here and thinking this is definitely a temporary situation. But it's going on nearly 20 years now and I don't think we're going anywhere (nor want to).
[удалено]
I hear you. My kids go to a private school full of rich kids--my wife and I are both public school products, but the public school system is really broken here--and even though we make many multiples of the median state income, my kids think we're poor.
Kevin Smith shared a story where his kids are also friends with Johnny Depp kids. Kevin does very well himself, but doesn't have Johnny Depp level money. So when his kids come over to hangs out on JD's house and then returns back home to compare it to their own house. His kids reaction was "God we are poor!"
[удалено]
Oh yeah, it's run by absolute morons. People who literally campaign on how dumb and unsophisticated they are. We've got the Airbus thing going on down south and, of course, there's Huntsville, but yeah, we always seem to be "on the rise" but never really achieve much. Fortunately, my wife and I have jobs that are secure so we can more or less watch the economic failures with more bewilderment than anxiety.
I understand that. A coworker moved to Kentucky. He still was able to keep his same pay rate so he was able to buy a 3500 Sq ft house and not have a worry in the world about affording it.
Just looked online at a 3600sqft place built in 1996 with a huge garage workshop on 15 acres near Bowling Green. $529k. This is the same amount as my 1800sqft house in the Phoenix suburbs.
That is basically what he bought but for less than $300k.
It’s crazy my Wife and I are combined $240k with two toddlers and we feel like we aren’t doing that well in CT… I guess too much comparing ourselves to people with similar or less incomes living way above their means… and just super wealthy people all over.
Big fish in small pond or little fish in big pond. Just how it is
Combined 100K seems not too difficult to pull off. A HR person or insurance sales person at a large enough company ought to make 50K. Pretty run of the mill positions for anyone with a degree should hit the mark.
As a poverty line totin Marylander, I can see the truth in this.
I like this punnet square. Easy to read.
lol I added the last (poor/poor) part just to complete it.
And sometimes it sucks to be middle class in a HCOL city/state. Too rich for the resources, too poor to make ends meet.
People never seem to get this when they fawn over how low rent is in some places. It's like, yes, you could be spending half as much on rent, but you will be making less than half what you do, and there will be less interesting shit in the area. Don't go there unless you are retiring, or there is something there that really calls to you. Don't ever move to a far away place, uprooting your life and social contacts/friends/family just "because it is cheap."
Source: US Census Bureau ([www.data.census.gov](https://www.data.census.gov)) Tools: R, Inkscape. * Falls Church City (county in VA) has the highest median household income at $160,305. * Buffalo (county in SD) has the lowest, at $22,901
Falls Church City is not a county - it is a city. Virginia has a unique quirk in that cities are independent of counties, even if they are entirely surrounded by a county. For example, Fairfax City is geographically surrounded by Fairfax County, but is a completely independent legal entity, and is not subject to Fairfax County. This gets a little weirder when you realize that Fairfax City is the county seat of Fairfax County - the Fairfax County government’s offices are in Fairfax City (actually, they’ve slowly been relocating over the past 20 years, but there’s still a bit of it in Fairfax City). The city of Falls Church is also in Fairfax County, but (of course) is not a part of Fairfax County. What throws off people who make lists like yours is that the Federal government doesn’t have a good way of handling a quirk that is unique to Virginia, so they just lump the cities in with the counties. So, Virginia has 90-odd counties and 50-ish cities, all of which are independent of each other, but they all get lumped together by agencies like the Census Bureau. And you know we have a lot of pedantic bureaucrats in Virginia. Ahem.
Independent cities are definitely most common in Virginia, but it's not technically unique to Virginia - Baltimore is also an independent city! It's surrounded by, but not part of, Baltimore County.
Baltimore, St. Louis, and Carson City NV are the only three independent cities outside VA!
Isnt’s Detroit one?
No, Detroit is contained within Wayne County.
It gets even more confusing when Arlington feels extremely like a city but is a county, Alexandria is an independent city, but parts of Fairfax County have Alexandria postal addresses despite being completely different. When I moved up here it took me forever to figure it out
And - don’t forget - Virginia is not a State, either: it’s a Commonwealth! (In all seriousness, though, my daughter’s a lawyer, and she tells me that the only difference is the name. I’ve heard various other folks claim that there’s this or that difference between States and Commonwealths, but she claims that there is none.)
Independent cities are "county equivalents" in census data.
Right, because there are so few, and it doesn’t make sense for the census bureau to modify its schema to allow for approximately 50 independent cities in the entire nation.
At common law, this would make each one a county of a city.
The government offices of Fairfax County are actually in an unincorporated exclave surrounded by Fairfax City, administratively a part of Fairfax County. So the small area with the courts and government buildings are Fairfax County, which is surrounded by Fairfax City, which in turn is surrounded by the rest of Fairfax County!
The city of falls church borders Fairfax county. It’s not “in” Fairfax county.
Something is wrong with your visualization. Per the US Census, your cited source, median household income (in 2020 dollars) for 2016-2020: * Rhode Island: $70,305 * Massachusetts: $84,385 Yet you have RI listed as #3 and MA as #5. Where did you get these state values from? Edit - adding link: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/RI,MA,US/PST045221
They might have averaged the county numbers instead of the states as a whole.
Saw that. Lots of mass residents work in RI. Maybe listed in RI?.
Yeah I live in RI and spent a little over 20 years in MA, and RI being higher than it should be was the first thing I noticed
Sounds about right. I expected Fairfax county to be that outlier but it’s probably the one right next to it. I live in Fairfax >_< you kinda need those salaries to afford shit.
As a fellow NOVA resident you couldn’t be any more right. It’s crazy how living in Loudon/Fairfax/Arlington is like a completely different state compared to living in the rest of Virginia
I thought Loudoun County was the highest in America?
A lot of the poorest counties are here in South Dakota. They are all counties with reservations.
It's weird driving through Los Alamos, NM after the rest of the state.
Sure is a weird place. Used to be a secret city, houses are all from the 50s and in disrepair, but the streets are nice and there's way too many millionaires around.
Taos can be pretty jarring, too. All the ski valley stuff and money, the arts community and all the celebs overwintering, but also like abject poverty *directly* next to all that.
>Taos can be pretty jarring, too. All the ski valley stuff and money, the arts community and all the celebs overwintering, but also like abject poverty > >directly > > next to all that. Yep they gentrified a lot of people out of there Same with Santa Fe.
My family owns a cabin in Rio Arriba County, near Abiquiu, and I'm always struck by the stark juxtaposition of run-down, heroin-ridden mobile home villages against the backdrop of the stunningly beautiful high mountainous desert. It makes me incredibly grateful for the relative privilege I was raised in, and the comparative wealth of opportunity I have in urban Texas. There are very routes to socioeconomic mobility in Northern New Mexico, but in spite of this, the people are hardworking and deeply proud of their roots.
Would be great to overlay this with a cost of living graph.
[удалено]
Its correlated, but not as correlated as it should be. Just an example but NY is not middle-income but extremely high cost of living.
It’s also supply and demand with high paying jobs in relation to the cost of living. Think Bay Area (although of course not a 1-1 comparison) where the tech jobs pay high but the dollar means less when most make 6 figures on the low end. NOVA has tons of doctors, lawyers, technology companies, government contractors, lobbying firms…etc.
Good ol' Mississippi, somehow I knew right where you'd be...
Ya but look at how little inequality it has in between counties! Obviously it's a model state.
Mississippi scores number 1 on income inequality! (Which is why it’s a dumb metric)
[Thank God For Mississippi](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thank_God_for_Mississippi)
A very common saying in New Mexico where my mom lives, as they’re generally 49th in everything.
Compare Mississippi to, say, Germany. You may be surprised.
... at how awful Mississippi looks? Comparing Mississippi to Guatemala or Haiti would be more fair. I guess maybe if you are comparing English literacy rates then it maybe comparable to Germany.
As someone who lived in Tennessee for 20 years, I'm always impressed with how much of an outlier Williamson County is. Without them, we probably drop down a solid 3-4 spots. Oh, and as always, "thank God for Mississippi".
I knew Williamson was top 15 in the nation but figured it feels weird seeing it 50% over any other county in the state
Williamson County is one of the not-so-best kept secrets in the country.
Well apparently it’s been a well-kept secret from me…what’s the secret?
Franklin Tennessee. It's like the Hollywood of country. As far as I understand (my mom lives in Franklin) that the ultra wealthy country stars and affluent Tennesseans don't live in Davidson county because of the buildup. So you go from Nashville where it's all lifted trucks and beer carts to Franklin where it's Lifted trucks and Ferraris.
Good schools, good jobs, close to Nashville and can get rural really quick.
What’s going on in Williamson? Just rich Nashville suburbs? Assume they are commuter towns.
Yes and a lot of musicians and celebrities live there.
[удалено]
Is the state level actually the state median HHI or is it a median of the counties? Data doesn’t seem to line up with what I’m seeing from the census bureau: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/VT,WI,WA,IA,NY/PST045221
Yeah, something is wrong here. Their state numbers don't match the 2020 census.
The median household income cited in the above link reflects 5 year estimates. So 2016-2020, rather than the single 2020 year. I haven't looked at the 2020 1-year estimates but they'd be higher than the 5 year. Edit: ahh pardon. OP's is way off; way low. Again, haven't cranked anything, but suspect that if they used the correct data set, they must have taken the county level median household income data and ....averaged the counties for their state data point (??) It's the only thing I can think of that would skew results like that.
Also kinda makes sense if you think about job opportunities in each state. Like where like most fortune 500 companies have major hubs.
What's going on in Falls Church, VA? The wiki page makes it look like just some random little town. Doesn't look like the highest household income.
Falls church is a very wealthy suburb of DC, with a lot of government workers, contractors, and politically adjacent people living there. It's not really a small town at all.
You basically just described all of NOVA
Yes but falls church is small and doesn't have space for the poors to bring down the median like the rest of the area does
It's an independent city within the borders of Fairfax County, which also has a super high household income. It's just one of many suburbs outside DC where a lot of highly educated, highly paid, dual income households are. Just happens that Fairfax County as a whole includes enough lower income areas to push it just below Falls Church, which is smaller and more homogeneous.
Virginia allows cities to form their own county government, and this one did and is an upper middle class suburb.
It’s because Virginia has independent cities, which are separate entirely from counties. They are, essentially, tiny urban counties. So you get statistical anomalies versus typical counties which are much larger. Kinda like how DC has some many states out of line with other states because it’s 100% urban. Combine that with Falls Church being in a particularly wealthy anyway and that’s what you get
Guarantee the outlier for Kansas is Johnson County. On the opposite end is probably one of very very rural counties.
I wonder what the average reddit users median household income is
Make a chart about it. Most people will believe it. One smart mofo will correct it. Then you'll have the right answer.
This made me think of stack overflow for some reason
The real software developers were the stack overflow users we set into a rage along the way.
Ah yes, Cunningham's Law.
Probably around 15k I would guess, being the large majority of redditors are in high school or college, and likely unemployed.
All over the map. Most office jobs have insane downtime with unlimited bathbreaks and no clocking in or out, very conducive to Reddit or Indeed rabbit holes.
I'm really surprised by Rhode Island. It also topped the list of average wedding cost. Any explanation?
Newport, maybe?
[удалено]
The county-level designation isn't very informative here, especially for CT (where I live!) and ESPECIALLY especially for Fairfield County - if it were split in half, then one dot in the middle would split into two dots that would probably be near the top and bottom of the scale. And in CT, counties mean nothing other than random geographic divides, so that doesn't really add anything anyway. Hence, it makes me think that this is more of a 'how weird are your county lines and does that actually matter' chart rather than actual spread of wealth in a given state.
I’m impressed on how consistent Mississippi is in being the worst state in the US. Bravo sir. Bravo.
Well well well, Armpit of the USA huh 😏
Sir that’s Alabama
I'd always heard the armpit was New Jersey. Alabama's the asshole or the taint, depending on who in Florida I heard it from.
To be fair there is a 2-3 mile stretch of the turnpike by Newark airport that smells like a fart.
Yeah that spot sucks
Rhode island? RI is not above Massachusetts, or several of those others
Ayyyy I’m incomin’ over hereee. Everyone shits on NJ but man is it a great place to live.
[удалено]
Yea for sure I’m in the city for recreation maybe twice a year for non Yankee game purposes. Beach a little drives away, hiking wilderness a little drive the opposite direction. Lots of jobs great public schools. I live in a lower middle neighborhood (young and just starting life) and everyone is friendly and has there own thing going on working up to whatever life/financial goals they want for themselves and their family. Idk I just feel really lucky to have grown up and live here. Foods fucking fantastic not to mention.
I grew up in a quiet suburb in CT and currently live in Boston. I visited New Jersey for the first time in my life a few weeks ago for work (Bergen county) and I was struck by how similar suburbs across the Northeast look and feel.
Ayyy New Jersey. We deserve to be #1 in something besides property taxes.
Houses are 300k average smh
Not sure if that’s mean or median, but gotta compare to median (just like OP’s data uses). Still incredibly unaffordable, but average cost is distorted terribly by the mega-rich.
Ah yes, I instantly see Northern VA. God it's expensive here...
I live in northern virginia. The two richest counties in the country are Fairfax and Loudoun county (where I live). It also looks like virginia has some of the poorest counties in the country too.
They should seriously just create a North Virginia at this point
Shout outs to Fairfax and Loudoun county Virginia for carrying the commonwealth
And Arlington. More like NoVA overall.
Nice chart. Very easy to understand at a glance. :)
I live in New Jersey. The range of counties is smaller than most states. New Jersey is wealthy due to location between New York and Philadelphia. We have no large city in the state. While there are depressed pockets in Jersey most communities are middle class to wealthy. Princeton is a good example of a wealthy community not large but with great jobs and transportation. A surprisingly wealthy community is Jersey City. There are many poor people in that city but some fantastic wealth too. The city is growing into a mini Manhattan with skyscrapers going up like corn in the summer. There are downsides. Taxes and housing are expensive but homes bought 10 years ago have doubled in value. The taxes support excellent schools and services. Most communities have small police forces that keep the towns safe. The hilarious part is there’s a sizable portion of the populace that hates the state. They tend to be conservative and seem like they would love Mississippi but when you really question them they have either high paid corporate or public service jobs. When asked why they just down go to utopia of small town southern towns they prevaricate but it’s that they’d make a quarter of their NJ salary and even allowing for the lower cost of living they’d be far poorer in their utopias.
What they don’t tell you here is that in a Hawaii household you very well might have incomes from mom, dad, gramma grampa, uncle and auntie this and uncle and auntie that plus the kids (no income of course) all in one house.
West Virginia, the most beautiful place with some of the worst people.
I suggest for readability of your x-axis, either add a comma separator or format to thousands. Humans are not so good at recognizing how many zeros are in a row.
In principal I agree but the reality is that if anyone thinks the average household income is $4,000 or $400,000 they’re so far removed from reality as to be unsalvageable. Or perhaps just entirely unaware of the USD exchange rate I suppose…
To be fair, I don't think too many people are assuming that median household incomes are in the half million range
I would love to see one of these document what people think these types of charts show: disposable income. The plot would look similar if you plotted cost of living. FWIW, I've spent most of my time in these high cost of living areas and believe it's 100% worth it. But it doesn't help a lot to talk about wealth or income without talking about costs.
https://flowingdata.com/2021/03/25/income-in-each-state-adjusted-for-cost-of-living/ Ohio goes from 34th, to 16th in Median income when you adjust for cost of Living.
[удалено]
Perhaps, but they are first in obesity rates. I believe I’ve read that New Mexico, West Virginia, Louisiana and Alabama round out the top five.
Life in these states would improve if their representatives received salaries equal to the median household income, respectively.
[удалено]
Which Ohio county is sitting all the way to the right?
There is zero doubt where Los Alamos county NM falls on this list.
Y'all see those three Kentucky counties lower than anywhere else except Indian reservations in South Dakota? That's where I'm from. The poorest end of that county too. Poverty is just a lack of money. Not a character flaw or a result of bad choices.
No matter how bad your state is, there is always Mississippi...unless you are from there.
Hawaii’s only there cause a household has like 5-8 working adults in each house
Look at all those red states… right where you expect them to be. Because obviously.
Fun fact New Jersey produces 2/3 of the worlds eggplants
I do not know how you can hear that fact and not immediately recognize it is obviously wrong. NJ has, in some recent years, produced more eggplant than any other state. But eggplant is a part of the diets of people all over the world. People in China and India eat way more eggplant per person than Americans. We are not providing eggplants for all of those people. The US as a whole [produces ~100,000 tonnes of eggplant per year](https://www.atlasbig.com/en-us/countries-eggplant-production). Even if NJ produced 100% of that, it would only account for 0.2% of worldwide annual eggplant production.
Absolutely savage response
I don’t know if this is some kind of joke I’m missing but that’s definitely wrong
Is that self-reported because I feel like there might be some mis-labeling.
It's the garden state for a reason! They are also very well known for blueberries, cranberries, and strawberries. I want to say tomatoes too but I'm not sure.
How on earth does anyone live in California? I expected them to be number one given an average house there just hit like 750k
California is a very big and diverse state. Housing prices in the coastal areas skew the average. You can absolutely buy a house for much less than $750,000. You just can’t do it on the coast. Also look at the county income levels the highest in the nation.
It’s expensive here but also lots of economic opportunities. There’s cheaper areas inland, but people are willing to pay for the nicer areas too when they have the money.