Connecticut, New York at Top of America's Power Couple Ranking
Connecticut, New York at Top of America's Power Couple Ranking
(Bloomberg) -- Connecticut is the new center for America’s power couples.
Bloomberg analyzed the household income level it took in each state for a dual-career married couple to qualify for the top 1 percent of earners. Connecticut not only came in first -- at $871,600 -- it was also among the few states where the minimum threshold increased by more than 10 percent from a year earlier.
New York, the previous year’s winner, fell to second, with a one-percenter’s minimum income almost unchanged at $789,800. New Jersey stayed in the third spot.
Alaska’s $363,900 and Wyoming’s $382,500 were at the other extreme, ranking at the bottom. Those two states were also extreme in how much the minimum tumbled -- 26 percent and 23 percent.
President Donald Trump can’t be blamed or credited. The indexes are based on full-year 2016 data, before he took office, that was collected by the U.S. Census Bureau. Instead, the energy market was more likely the culprit for income drops among the elite, who often rely on performance bonuses, in oil-rich Alaska and Wyoming, the largest coal producer.
Both states were among a limited few in recession in 2016, according to reports by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas and S&P Global Ratings. Alaska pumped oil through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System at about a quarter of capacity as prices plunged by half from two years earlier, while Wyoming’s coal output through most of the year was down by about 25 percent from a year earlier, as the coal bust spread to the Powder River Basin from mines in Appalachia.
The biggest outlier isn’t in the official ranking. For a married couple to be a one-percenter in Washington D.C., it took $1.01 million, up 7 percent for the previous year.
Wealth and income is relative.
| Methodology: Only included household income, not accumulated wealth, from two-earner, married family households, whether opposite- or same-sex couples, in which both spouses worked, regardless of full-time, part-time status; none of the other family member, neither children nor relatives, worked; only concerning household income which may include, but not limited to, wages, salaries, production-related bonuses, self-employment income, interests, dividends, net rental income, royalties, distributions from estate and trust. Numbers respectively in 2016 and 2015 inflation-adjusted dollars and have been rounded to the nearest hundredth; year-over-year comparison done on nominal basis. |
To contact the reporters on this story: Lee Miller in Bangkok at lmiller@bloomberg.net, Wei Lu in New York at wlu30@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Tanzi at atanzi@bloomberg.net, Sarah McGregor, Randy Woods
©2018 Bloomberg L.P.