This is really just an exercise in using R to produce maps from the Census’s public use microdata sample, something I haven’t done before. But the content may be interesting – it shows the geographic distribution of households with incomes above $300,000 across New York State.
UPDATE: Here is the same exercise for Illinois.
Interesting. Can you share the source as I would be interested in my area, Metro Chicago. A few other thoughts:
Is this $300,000 threshold personal income or household?
What is the tax map’s source for income? Where are they getting their data? I imagine most people in that bracket probably under report their income to avoid taxes.
Also is the $300,000 coming from work income, capital gains, stocks, wealth, etc in all or part?
My sense is the top quarter of incomes are much wealthier than reported in the media due to stocks, assets, capital gains, inheritance, rents from rent seeking, and other contributors to personal and household wealth.
I saw a video on wealth inequality in America and it is more one sided than many people realize.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM
Lastly my personal belief is only a few percent should make $300,000 or more. Like Jonas Salk type people that have contributed to the good of mankind.
The fact that there are many areas that have double digit percents of people greater than $300,000 in a country with millions of homeless and poverty is concerning.
Thanks for posting the map
Sorry, I didn’t actually mean to post that. I just produced it as practice mapping data with R.
But since it’s up:
It’s total household income. That includes dividends, interest etc., but not inheritances or capital gains.
The source is the Census – the annual American Community Survey. It’s a 5 percent sample. It’s not good for extremely high incomes — household income is topcoded at $3 million or so and of course there are reporting issues. Tax data is much better, but tax microdata is only available to the Pikettys and such, not to ordinary mortals like me. (And I don’t know how much geographic detail even they get.)
And yes, the ultimate reason to map out concentrations of extreme incomes is as a step toward doing away with them.
I believe one of the things that has made the MeToo movement successful is the concept of public shaming. Many activist organizations are starting to weaponize social media. So maybe by mapping out concentrations of income may have the same effect of public shaming. My wife and I watched a documentary where they showed one end of Park Avenue in NY where the elites live and the other end of Park Avenue where poor live. So as far as income maybe public shaming will not work as some people have no shame.
I’ve added a similar map for Illinois, including the Chicago area. Nothing too surprising – in contrast to New York, most of the high-income households are in the north suburbs rather than in the city itself. Unfortunately, this dataset doesn’t allow us to get any more geographic detail.
Thanks for the map of Illinois. I went to the Census – the annual American Community Survey website but was not able to create a map. In looking at Cook County’s data which includes Chicago I was surprised at the low percent of high income households. With all the gentrification in Chicago the percent of individuals and households with incomes above $200,000 has to be higher . I know for a fact that in one neighborhood in Chicago, Wicker Park, you have to have a six figure income( I think the minimum was $180K) just to qualify for a mortgage. I bring this up in relation to my earlier comment about the “truthfulness” of the data. I know this is an economics blog and not demographics focused so thanks for the map
Enjoy the 4th.
Funy you mention Wicker Park. I lived near there for a while in the 1990s. Hung out often in Earwax on Milwaukee; went to some great jazz shows at the HotHouse in its original Wicker Park location; ate a lot of late-night Mexican food at El Chino. You certainly didn’t need a six-figure income to live there then. All those places are long gone; but of course people were already up in arms about gentrification then.
This was posted today on the Capitol Fax, a Illinois political blog.
https://capitolfax.com/2018/07/19/the-new-guilded-age/
This is a link to a tweet from the Illinois Working Together organization which is reposting data from the Economic Policy Institute. It shows the top states in income inequality. And the states that are first and eighth highest states for income inequality: The two maps in your post, New York and Illinois.
https://twitter.com/IllinoisWorking/status/1019991569838104576
All the data came from a recent income inequality report by the EPI which you might find interesting.
https://www.epi.org/147963/pre/8c46ec847fa9848854e8f3ef3c720acf04f6aa508ed8bde8c3102508a3201dfe