Another horrible repeating of the "income inequality" trope, and then showing graphs of median income that don't get near the top l% of US earners, while citing a stat that the top 1% of earners are gaining.
Isn't that what you'd expect? There's a factor of ten difference these days between the poverty line and a fairly typical white-collar income (call it $120K.) Is it really surprising, or telling, that at the tract-level you'd find a factor of ten difference in a major city? Is there a major city where you don't see that?
You usually see a gradient where the tract-to-tract variance is less pronounced. A city will almost always contain tracts where there is a 10x difference between the highest and lowest numbers, but it is not as frequent that those tracts will be located right next to each other. There are several other cities which are like this, Delhi and to some extent Philadelphia both come to mind and I think it is notable there as well.
And, for whatever it's worth, I also think the variance even when the tracts are not next to each other is equally worthy of examination. Just because it is common does not mean it isn't something we shouldn't talk about. In many ways, when the neighborhoods are next to each other it is a good thing for visibility.
New York has this... I don't think it's atypical. Tracts are so small that it only takes a single development to raise or depress median income grossly. Take a look at the middle of Manhattan: there are tracts with $10K next to tracts with $120K, but they might have as few as 20 households in tract, which means that a single building with 11 low-income tenants would pull the median down to the poverty line.
$120K is typical? Even if you only isolate the executive/management positions from SF, which is one of the most inflated markets in the world, the median is still only about $100k. Obviously, the average of all white-collar jobs will be far lower. In more representative parts of the country, I'd imagine that it's below $50k (which is only two to four times the poverty level, not ten.)
Honestly, where do people get the idea that the average American makes $120k. That salary is astronomical.
I specifically called it out as "white-collar" income, not overall median income.
It's household income, not per capita. The median household income for SF is $73. I don't think it's out of bounds to assume that for a white collar worker (call it a 75th percentile income) that number is well over $120.
About 30% of the US gets a bachelor's degree, which seems like a reasonable proxy for the number of people working in white collar office jobs. So a median white collar worker is probably about 80th percentile income. For the overall US, that works out to $105K to $110K.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_...
Table H-1. Income Limits for Each Fifth and Top 5 Percent of
All Households: 1967 to 2011
Year Lowest Second Third Fourth Top 5 percent
2011 20,262 38,520 62,434 101,582 186,000
1967 (adj) 19,931 38,866 55,164 78,663 126,232
1967 3,000 5,850 8,303 11,840 19,000
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Table H-2. Share of Aggregate Income Received by Each Fifth and
Top 5 Percent of Households, All Races: 1967 to 2011
Year Lowest Second Third Fourth Highest Top 5 percent
2011 3.2 8.4 14.3 23.0 51.1 22.3
1967 4.0 10.8 17.3 24.2 43.6 17.2
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Table H-3. Mean Household Income Received by Each Fifth and
Top 5 Percent, All Races: 1967 to 2011
Year Lowest Second Third Fourth Highest Top 5 percent
2011 11,239 29,204 49,842 80,080 178,020 311,444
1967 (adj) 10,630 29,452 47,018 65,787 118,393 186,758
1967 1,600 4,433 7,077 9,902 17,820 28,110
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Table H-6. Regions--All Races by Median and Mean Income: 1975 to 2011
Median income Mean income
Current $ 2011 $ Current $ 2011 $
2011 50,054 50,054 69,677 69,677
1975 11,800 44,851 13,779 52,373
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This data indicates to me that the bottom 3/5ths of income earners earn about what they did 45 years ago if adjusted for inflation, while the top income earners have increased. The fact that the top 20% have increased their earnings drastically does not necessarily mean to me that there's a problem.
It simply means if you can break out of the slump and make your way into the top 20% of income earners that you will be more rewarded than you were 45 years ago.
A factor of ten difference between census tracts in the same city is worth examining.