[legitster]

Median income can also be misleading. If the government is taking on lots of debts to pay for things like health care or education, that's not necessarily sustainable economics.

GDP Per Capita is overall the best metric when thinking on a long-term economic scale.

As to how the people in Jackson, MS are doing - a lot of this comes down to what communities are doing with that wealth. There are lots of young professionals having decent lives, even in Mississippi - but a lot of that wealth disappears into cars and big private properties and other unequally distributed things.