I'm not sure having a higher median income necessarily equates to being the "wealthiest." For example, I live between Sacramento and the bay area and these income numbers don't go very far with the cost of living here. But if I was making $71k in Boise or Little Rock, I could be living a much wealthier lifestyle.
Nowhere on this quiz does it say that these are the 15 urban areas with the highest quality of living. I'm fairly comfortable with "more money = wealthier." No claims are being made as to what you can or can't do with that money.
As the Beatles said, money can't buy you love. And as Homer Simpson said, it can't buy you a dinosaur.
It's not like there's no correlation between wealth as measured here and high standards of living; and there's no lie in the statistics unless you infer one that's not there.
Hartford and other older cities restricted to small boundaries get hampered in all sorts of ways, including statistics.
Hartford is technically penned into 17 square miles, while San Antonio gobbles up 500, Austin 320, Oklahoma City 600, etc. Such discrepancies even cause giant suburbs to be named the primary "city" instead of the established urban core, like Virginia Beach (Norfolk), Cape Coral (Fort Myers), San Jose (San Francisco)...
Is my brain square and I am just not getting it but places like Denver as of 2022 have a population of around ~700k and In the description it says only places with a population over 1 million
Was surprised by Hartford. I didn't try any Connecticut cities, figuring they would either be included in the New York or Boston metro areas or wouldn't be big enough.
In order to adjust for differences in costs of living, I divided each metro area's median household income by its AdvisorSmith City Cost of Living Index (and re-normalized by multiplying by 100).
Here are the richest metro areas by cost-of-living-adjusted median household income (1m+ population metros only):
Really interesting. I live in one of the top five listed locations, and I can tell you even here it's not that great. We're all just really pretty screwed then it would seem. :(
As the Beatles said, money can't buy you love. And as Homer Simpson said, it can't buy you a dinosaur.
Hartford is technically penned into 17 square miles, while San Antonio gobbles up 500, Austin 320, Oklahoma City 600, etc. Such discrepancies even cause giant suburbs to be named the primary "city" instead of the established urban core, like Virginia Beach (Norfolk), Cape Coral (Fort Myers), San Jose (San Francisco)...
Here are the richest metro areas by cost-of-living-adjusted median household income (1m+ population metros only):
1. Washington, DC ($91,886)
2. Raleigh ($85,560)
3. Sacramento ($84,384)
4. Minneapolis ($82,954)
5. Seattle ($81,638)
6. Austin ($81,173)
7. Denver ($80,924)
8. Kansas City ($80,677)
9. Baltimore ($80,656)
10. San Jose ($80,629)
11. Hartford ($78,490)
12. St. Louis ($78,336)
13. Chicago ($78,088)
14. Indianapolis ($77,854)
15. Philadelphia ($77,376)
16. Atlanta ($77,357)
17. Dallas ($77,132)
18. Grand Rapids, MI ($76,856)
19. Salt Lake City ($76,777)
20. Cincinnati ($76,643)
1. Honolulu ($57,408)
2. Miami ($57,960)
3. Los Angeles ($58,679)
4. Fresno ($60,110)
5. New Orleans ($61,512)
6. Tampa ($62,082)
7. Tucson ($62,095)
8. Las Vegas ($63,234)
9. Memphis ($63,311)
10. Orlando ($64,039)
11. Buffalo ($64,536)
12. San Francisco ($64,952)
13. New York City ($65,945)
14. Providence ($66,178)
15. Riverside ($66,338)
16. San Diego ($66,816)
17. Birmingham ($66,951)
18. Tulsa ($68,854)
19. Rochester, NY ($68,857)
20. Jacksonville ($69,085)