How county median household income is estimated

What SAIPE produces

SAIPE stands for Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates. Per the Census Bureau, it produces county and state estimates of the number of people in poverty, children in poverty, and median household income. For counties and states the program models the estimates by combining survey data with population estimates and administrative records, with the American Community Survey as the survey input.

How county incomes spread out

Of 3,143 county-equivalents with a 2023 estimate, 1,571 are above the median of $62,851. The range runs from $28,579 in Claiborne County, MS to $173,655 in Loudoun County, VA, a ratio of 6.1 to 1. One county-equivalent, Kalawao County, HI, has no published estimate and is left unranked.

Median county income by state

The table ranks states by the median of their county incomes. It is not a state median household income: each county counts once, whatever its size. It answers a different question, how well off the typical county in a state is. Virginia has the widest spread between its richest and poorest county, a ratio of 4.1 to 1.

Using the numbers well

• Each estimate has a confidence interval, published with the data. Two counties a few hundred dollars apart are not clearly different.
• Incomes are in dollars of the estimate year and are not adjusted for local prices. A high income in an expensive county can buy less than a lower income elsewhere.
• Median household income is not per person income. Counties with larger households can have higher household medians.

Where to go next

See the full highest income counties and lowest income counties rankings, or compare any two counties side by side with the tool below.

Income and density

Splitting counties by density shows how income tracks urbanization. The quarter of counties with the highest density have a median household income of $74,800, while the quarter with the lowest density have $59,844. The relationship is not a rule. In the sparsest quarter, Teton County, WY reports $130,156, and in the densest quarter Robeson County, NC reports $42,180.

Where income shows up on this site

Every county page shows its SAIPE 2023 median household income with its national rank and its rank within the state, and marks the counties with no estimate as unranked rather than guessing. State pages sort counties by income in the county table. The figures are never averaged into a state income, because an average of county medians is not a median of households.

Comparing income across states

The state table above uses the median county. The highest, District of Columbia, has a median county income of $104,643; the lowest, Mississippi, has $48,950. States with a few large counties, such as Delaware and Hawaii, rest on only a handful of values, so one county can move their median a lot.

For a household-weighted state figure, use the state-level SAIPE estimate or the American Community Survey rather than anything built from county medians.