New Report Shares What You Need to Earn to be Considered ‘Rich’ in Your City
There’s often a lot of argument about what constitutes middle class, but it looks like wealthy folks might have a better measuring stick. Quartz recently took a look at a new report from Brookings which ran the numbers on the 50 largest cities in the U.S. to find out what the nation’s top 5 percent earn and where they earn the most. As you may suspect, there’s a huge gap in wealth between cities depending on where you look, but what may be of interest to you is the number that pops up when looking at NYC. What they found was that the top earners here are pulling in $243,529 on average.
Graph created by Quartz
Seem low to you? It is. As Quartz also points out: “New York’s lower rankings on these lists speaks to the superlative wealth of Manhattan, which is watered down by the outer boroughs. Using a slightly different analysis, the U.S. Census found in 2014 that the big island was the most unequal place in the country. Cost of living also wasn’t taken into account here, which we all know plays a big role in how wealthy we “feel” even if our salaries look adequate or even big against the Brookings benchmarks.
The report also took a look at those closer to the bottom of the distribution—those earning more than only 20 percent of all other households. The ratio between the top and bottom samples shows the level of disparity. For example, the top 5 percent in NYC earn about 13.7 times more that the 20th percentile.
Graph created by Quartz
The data visualized in a map by Brookings
You can check out the complete report here for more details.
[Via Quartz]
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