Five Virginia localities among U.S. places with highest income

Published December 12, 2013 by Robert Powell, III

Five Northern Virginia localities are among the U.S. counties with the highest median household income in the nation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The group includes Arlington County, $99,255; Fairfax County, $106,690; Loudoun County, $118,934, and Stafford County,  $95,927.  The Census Bureau also listed Falls Church  as a county equivalent in the survey, with median household income of  $121,250. Fall Church is an independent city.

Falls Church and Loudoun also had among the lowest poverty rates in the country.

The data were drawn from the Census Bureau’s Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates program, which provides the only current, single-year income and poverty statistics for all sizes of counties and school districts. The group includes roughly 3,140 counties and nearly 14,000 school districts nationally.

“Metropolitan counties along the East Coast continued to have the highest median household income and lowest poverty in the country,” Lucinda Dalzell, chief of the Census Bureau's Small Areas Estimates Branch, said in a statement. “These counties are located in large metro areas, such as Boston and New York, and are heavily concentrated in the Northern Virginia portion of the Washington area; Northern Virginia alone accounted for about one-fifth of the nation's 50 highest-income counties.”