US Income Map

We mapped 70 million US voters to their address and visualized their estimated income to create the US Income Map.

US Income Map

Estimated incomes are shown from low incomes in light yellow to high incomes in deep red. Click on the image above to open a high resolution 4600×2474 image to look at any part of the country in detail. We started with the US voter file from data provider Labels & Lists. This voter file has estimated income data for 70 million voters or 45% of the 156 million voters in the national voter database. Each voter is mapped to its address in Bing Maps and colored depending on the estimated income. The map shows one dot per address. If there are more voters on a single address then their estimated incomes are averaged to determine the color of the address. This means that the map under-represents voters who live in apartment complexes. The map also does not show income levels for people who are not registered to vote. The available estimated income data was not perfect. You will notice that and for some parts of the US there is no estimated income available and the map is not colored (find the holes in the data!).

There are a lot of interesting things that you can see from the map. A lot of the wealth in the US is concentrated in the NorthEast from Washington DC through Philadelphia to New York City and Boston. Most large metro areas show a yellow star pattern in the center where lower income levels are concentrated with red areas around it that show the higher income suburbs. You can also see that incomes are generally lower once you get further away from the large metropolitan areas. Incomes in rural areas are low.

The US Income Map is created in a special version of VoterMapping using Moonshadow Mobile’s Big Data Visualizer.