Were you surprised to learn that Jackson Hole, Wyoming, is the most economically unequal city in the U.S.? Curious to see how your county stacks up? Now, a new graphic from the cost-visualization site How Much has mapped economic data from the Economic Policy Institute showing the relative income disparities between an area’s top 1 percent of wealthy folks compared to the other 99 percent.
On average, the top 1 percent has an annual income that’s more than 25.3 times the lower 99 percent, working out to respective averages of $1,152,293 and $45,567 in income per year.
After Teton county, Wyoming—where the top 1 percent’s income was 233 times the income of the lower 99 percent—the counties with the greatest income inequality were La Salle, Texas; Shackelford, Texas; New York, New York; and Custer, Colorado. In some of these counties, the inequality is driven in part by restrictive zoning practices that price-out low- and middle-income earners.
The areas with the lowest income inequality had a top 1 percent making just five to six times the bottom 99 percent. These counties included Wade Hampton, Alaska; Manassas Park City, Virginia; Shannon, South Dakota; Aleutians West, Alaska; and Chattahoochee, Georgia—though several of these counties have extreme poverty and low employment.
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