Top Wealth Centers

Since we know health disparities exist and we know (for example) that higher income and higher educated people are more likely to use generics, I think it’s important to understand some of the ways areas are evaluated and ranked by 3rd parties on their “wealth”.

Reading the St. Louis Business Journal last week, they showed the IL and MO cities and how they ranked.  The metrics were interesting:

• Median household income
• Households with incomes above $200K
• Median home value
• Households with 4+ vehicles (really?)
• Adults with bachelors degrees

McLean, VA was the top ranked city:

• $156,292 median household income (vs. $50,007 nationally)
• 36% of households have an income above $200k (vs. 3.7% nationally)
• 79% of adults hold bachelors degrees (vs. 27% nationally)

Lake Forest, IL was the second ranked city and has 5% of households with an annual income of more than $1.15M and 7.4% of households had 4+ vehicles.

(This analysis that they did was based on US Census Bureau’s 2005-2007 American Community Survey.)