America's 5 highest income counties surround Washington, D.C.


The swamp may be dirty, but it pays well.
The United States contains 3,142 counties, and the five of them with the highest median income levels are all in the Washington, D.C., metro area, the Census Bureau reports, using data from 2013 to 2017. They are Loudoun, Fairfax, and Arlington Counties in Virginia, as well as Falls Church City, Virginia, and Howard County, Maryland.
The lowest income counties tend to be found in the Southeast region, especially in rural areas. The Census Bureau lists McCreary, Bell, and Harlan Counties in Kentucky with Holmes County, Mississippi, and Sumter County, Alabama, as five of the lowest median income counties nationwide.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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