Photo by NCinDCThe Washington area continues to be home to most of the list of the United States’ 10 richest counties, but the gap between the region’s highest and lowest earners continues to expand, according to data released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.
The 2011 American Community Survey—an annual tally of data usually collected in the long-form version of the decennial census—shows that while the effects of the 2007-2009 recession are tapering off, the distance between the wealthiest and poorest residents continues to grow in several regions, including the District of Columbia.
For many of D.C.’s surrounding counties, the boom times are still going. As they have in previous rankings of wealth by geographic subdivision, Loudoun and Fairfax counties topped the list of the 10 wealthiest counties, the Post reports today. Arlington County is now No. 3, while Howard, Montgomery, Fauquier and Prince William alos made the chart.
Of course, much of the Washington area’s relative stability comes from its dependence on the federal government and government contractors as the leading industries here, both of which have proven to be fairly immune to the recession that tore through the industrial interior of the United States. A George Mason University economist tells the Post as much:
“It’s not only that we have low unemployment and a lot of dual-income households,” said Stephen Fuller, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University. “We lost a few government jobs, but not the high-paying, professional business-service jobs that are still growing, if not as fast as they used to. Since the rest of the country is in such poor shape, we just have to show a little bit of growth here, and we look pretty good.”
And in the broad view, things are improving for the District, too. Over the past five years, median household income in D.C. has grown from $54,000 to $63,000, taking the District from 16th to fifth place. Jim Dinegar, who heads the Washington Board of Trade, chalked it up to an expanded corporate presence in the region.
“This is a result of the moves of the Northrop Grummans, the Hiltons, the Volkwagens, the SAICs,” Dinegar told the Post.
But while some figures might paint a rosier outlook from high above, recent census data also reveal that poverty and income inequality are on the rise in D.C. The increase in the national poverty rate has slowed, but figures analyzed last week by the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute put the local two-year poverty rate at 19.7 percent, only a sliver below its 10-year peak of 19.8 reached in 2005-2006.
Thirty percent of children in D.C. lived below the poverty level last year, according to the American Community Survey. Even with a more generous cutoff, about 110,000 households in the District—about 41 percent—earn less than $50,000 a year. Roughly 10,000 households receive supplemental cash benefits to make ends meet, while nearly 39,000, or 14.4 percent receive food stamps. Nationally, 13 percent of households get food stamp assistance.
