Portfolio has prepared a useful interactive map highlighting America's increasing split between thehaves and the have nots based on city of residence. Case in point: the wealthiest city in the US according to Portfolio, Newport Beach, has more than a quarter of its residentshouseholds making over $200,000. On the other end of the spectrum is Reading, PA, whose 80,000 households have an average per capita income of $14,120 (of half the national average), and none makes over $200,000. And a stab at New Yorkers - with a median household income of just $31,245, and "just" 6.9% of households making $200,000, Mike Bloomberg's city ranks a distant 60th in the list of wealthiest cities.
Some other characteristics of uberwealthy Newport Beach, which is home to $1+ trillion bond manager PIMCO, situated conveniently about 13.5 seconds away from the Newport Beach Country Club:
- Newport Beach’s per capita income (PCI) of $86,586 easily leads the 420 U.S. communities with populations above 75,000, and it triples the national PCI of $27,589. (Per capita income is the average amount of money earned by each resident of a community in a given year.)
- More than a quarter of Newport Beach’s households (28.6 percent, to be exact) have annual incomes of more than $200,000. Just two other cities in the study group are above 17 percent—Newton, Massachusetts, and Pleasanton, California—though neither does any better than 24 percent.
- The median value for homes in Newport Beach exceeds $1 million. Another California city, Santa Barbara, is the only other place analyzed by Portfolio.com/bizjournals that can make that claim. (A median is a midpoint, with half of all homes being worth more and half worth less.)
One thing is certain: if you live in any of the 5 poorest cities, which in addition to Reading include Camden, New Jersey; Flint, Michigan; Brownsville, Texas; and Gary, Indiana (and Detroit, which is sixth from the bottom), the last thing you care about it the prevailing home price around Fashion Island, or level of the S&P - you are likely much more concerned about the amount of ammunition in your garage.
More maps and charts can be found here.
