Mapping Change in Median Household Income

I recent­ly updat­ed the Income Lay­er on Jus­tice Map to use the lat­est 2011–2015 Amer­i­can Com­mu­ni­ty Sur­vey data.

You can view the data by coun­ty or by cen­sus tract (rough­ly 4000 peo­ple). While cen­sus tracts pro­vide high­er res­o­lu­tion that helps us iden­ti­fy areas of envi­ron­men­tal injus­tice, unfor­tu­nate­ly the con­fi­dence inter­val is much larg­er. So there is a lot of noise in the data. If you are look­ing at the income lay­er and see a ran­dom checker­board of blue and red — that is noisy data.

As part of this process, I added a Income Change lay­er that shows the change in medi­an house­hold income between the first peri­od (2006–2010) and a sec­ond peri­od (2011–2015).

It is eas­i­est to see the trend in chang­ing income by look­ing at the coun­ties. The cen­sus tract data is even nois­i­er than the reg­u­lar income data, as the con­fi­dence inter­val is approx­i­mate­ly twice as large. How­ev­er where there are strong trends — like gen­tri­fi­ca­tion in DC and Philadel­phia you can eas­i­ly see them at the tract level.

Click on the map to learn how income has been chang­ing in your community!