US States vs Capitals: Median Household Income
The other day I took a train from NYC to Philadelphia. As I passed through the somewhat desolate station in Trenton, NJ, I wondered to myself: How do states' capitals' median household incomes compare to the states themselves? What states are "richer" or "poorer" than their capital cities?
With the help of data from the US Census FactFinder, I put together this map to answer the question. At one end of the scale is Hartford, CT, whose $29313 median household income is only 41.9% of the state's median household income of $69899. At the opposite end is Juneau, AK, whose $84750 MHI is 118% of the state's $71829.
Only seventeen states have a median household income above that of the state, whereas the remaining 33 capitals lag behind the state's median. On average, state capital MHIs are 90% of their states. And finally, Washington DC, not included in this map, has a $69235 MHI, 129.5% of the overall United States MHI of $53482.
I don't know if there's any conclusions to draw from this. Since this has to do with capital city limits only, there's a possibility that suburbs could influence the findings immensely. (I've been to West Hartford, CT, for example, and found it to be very nice. But it's not the capital of the state, only a directly neighboring city.) Similarly, should there even be a conclusion to be drawn? Austin is a college town with a lot of technology, so it finds itself slightly better off than Texas as a whole. Albany is a Rust Belt city whose industries have been mostly left behind by the changing economy, so perhaps in the past it would have beaten NY as a whole, but today doesn't hold up. In any case, if there's one thing I enjoy, it's answering interesting data-based questions. Raw data below:
