{"id":8781,"date":"2017-10-26T07:00:16","date_gmt":"2017-10-26T11:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=8781"},"modified":"2017-10-26T14:45:23","modified_gmt":"2017-10-26T18:45:23","slug":"mocos-mighty-seven-zip-codes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=8781","title":{"rendered":"MoCo\u2019s Mighty Seven Zip Codes"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco.<\/em><\/p>\n

For a long time, Montgomery County has been thought of as a wealthy jurisdiction.\u00a0 It has long appeared in lists of the nation\u2019s richest counties (although it is about to drop out of the top twenty<\/a>).\u00a0 Politicians elsewhere in Maryland view it as a gold mine, with Senate President Mike Miller famously saying<\/a>, \u201cIt\u2019s like Never Neverland for other legislators of the state.\u201d\u00a0 The county is regularly shorted by state wealth formulas which disproportionately distribute state aid, especially for public schools, to other parts of Maryland.<\/p>\n

But most of Montgomery County is not particularly rich.\u00a0 Its wealth is concentrated in seven zip codes which skew its mean household income upward and make the county as a whole appear richer than it really is.<\/p>\n

All residents of MoCo understand that there are huge differences between areas in the county even though many outsiders do not.\u00a0 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county\u2019s mean household income was $133,543 over the 2011-2015 period, just barely squeaking past Howard County ($132,751) for tops in the state.\u00a0 But that conceals big variations.\u00a0 MoCo has nine zip codes in which mean household incomes were under $100,000.\u00a0 The combined mean household income of these areas ($92,668) is roughly equal to the mean household income of Prince George\u2019s County ($90,268).<\/p>\n

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MoCo has seven zip codes in which mean household incomes were over $200,000 in the 2011-2015 period.\u00a0 These zip codes, mostly located northwest of D.C., account for 14% of the county\u2019s households and 25% of its household income.\u00a0 If these zip codes were regarded as a separate jurisdiction, their combined mean household income would be $238,917.\u00a0 The combined mean household income of the rest of Montgomery County is $116,618 \u2013 about half the income of the Mighty Seven.<\/p>\n

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How do the mean incomes of the Mighty Seven and the rest of the county compare to the rest of the region?\u00a0 We show the mean household incomes of those two parts of the county along with the other large jurisdictions in the region below.\u00a0 The Mighty Seven as a group are easily at the top although we suspect that extracts of the wealthiest parts of Loudoun, Fairfax, Howard and D.C. would also be in that range.\u00a0 As for the rest of the county, its income is average compared to the rest of the region.<\/p>\n

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That\u2019s right, folks \u2013 with the exception of its wealthiest zip codes, MoCo is a middle-income jurisdiction by the (admittedly high) standards of the Washington region.<\/p>\n

This reality has interesting implications for policy makers and candidates.\u00a0 The issue of equity between different parts of Montgomery County is getting traction as a political issue in the upcoming election.\u00a0 But in terms of who pays the county government\u2019s bills, there is no question that county revenues are hugely dependent on a limited number of wealthy neighborhoods, especially in the absence of robust economic growth<\/a>.\u00a0 If those residents decide that they can get a better deal by living somewhere else, that would be a huge threat to the county\u2019s tax base.<\/p>\n

As for the state level, there\u2019s a tendency to look at differing incomes and wealth BETWEEN counties but not INSIDE counties.\u00a0 That\u2019s how state wealth formulas work \u2013 they compare counties to each other but not local areas to each other.\u00a0 How many state policy makers have understood prior to reading this blog post that there is a large part of Montgomery County that is economically comparable to Prince George\u2019s?\u00a0 It\u2019s time for a serious examination of how to direct state aid to local areas in need regardless of which county borders they happen to occupy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco. For a long time, Montgomery County has been thought of as a wealthy jurisdiction.\u00a0 It has long appeared in lists of the nation\u2019s richest counties (although it is about to drop out of the top twenty).\u00a0 Politicians elsewhere in Maryland view it as a gold mine, with Senate President Mike Miller famously … Continue reading MoCo\u2019s Mighty Seven Zip Codes<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[151,63,211],"tags":[1545,1493,1890],"class_list":["post-8781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-montgomery-county","category-state-aid","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-montgomery-county","tag-state-aid"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-2hD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8781"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8791,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8781\/revisions\/8791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}