The (Very) Few Places With No Black-White Income Gap

The income gap between black and white households has grown since 2000 and only worsened since the recession.

In 2015, the median income for black households was 59.5 percent of that for whites, or $36,544 to $61,394. That’s a greater gap than at the end of the recession in 2009, when black income was 61.2 percent of white income.

Yet, a tiny number of places exist where black household income is greater than that of whites. Of the 364 large U.S. counties whose populations are at least 5 percent black, there are seven, according to a Stateline analysis of U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey data for 2010-14.

Among them: Stafford County, Virginia, an exurban bedroom community of Washington, D.C., and home to military installations, where many black families find contract work or commute to government jobs in the nation’s capital.

The typical black household there earned an average of $105,628 from 2010 through 2014, the highest income of the seven counties. White households earned an average of $99,533 during that time. Washington, D.C., by contrast, had one of the biggest gaps in the nation — black household income was $40,829, little more than a third of the $115,109 for white households.

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