Tuesday, March 05, 2019

How Prosperous is Your County?


The eastern seaboard of the United States from Boston down to Washington D.C. is economically vibrant at the moment. The western coast of California, from Sonoma County down to San Diego is also looking very prosperous.

You can view your state and county's vitality rating on the Hamilton Project's Exploring the Geography of Prosperity interactive map. The Hamilton Project's Vitality Index rates every U.S. county based on its economic prosperity and social well-being. To arrive at a rating the Vitality Index combines a county’s median household income, poverty rate, unemployment rate, prime-age employment rate, life expectancy, and housing vacancy rate.

The blue counties on the map have a higher vitality score, while the yellow counties have lower scores. If you select a state on the map you can view the state's vitality score and compare the state's median household income, poverty rate, unemployment rate, prime-age employment rate, life expectancy, and housing vacancy rate to those of the U.S. as a whole. Once you have selected a state you can select an individual county to compare the county's vitality rating to the ratings of the state as a whole and the national ratings.


The two prosperous corridors on each coast of the USA can also be clearly seen on a map from Bloomberg. Bloomberg has mapped where America's richest people live. Using data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey they have mapped out the counties which are attracting America's highest earners.

Americans Earning Over $200,000 Are Flocking to These Neighborhoods includes a map showing the concentration of households earning $200,000 or more in each county. Bloomberg has also mapped the 100 neighborhoods which have seem the highest growth in high earners since 2000.

The census tract which has seen the highest growth of households earning $200,000 is in Cook County, Illinois. Four of the top ten census tracts showing an increase in high earners are in commuting distance of Washington DC. According to Bloomberg in some of these areas "around half of households earn more than $200,000".


Measure of America has developed the American Human Development Index to measure the well-being of Americans in a number of different areas, including health, education, and income. You can explore these well-being scores at the county, state and congressional district level using the Measure of America interactive map.

Mapping America allows you to view choropleth maps visualizing the well-being scores at different administrative levels. Select one of the individual indices from any of the different topic areas and you can view how counties, states or congressional districts score on that metric. As well as the choropleth map showing the well-being score in every county a bar chart organizes every county in the USA from best to worst.

If you select an individual county or congressional district on the map an information window opens with details on all of the area's well-being scores for each of the individual health, education and income indices.

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