The District of Columbia has the fourth-highest poverty rate in the U.S., even though the nation’s capital was just one of two jurisdictions where household incomes increased last year, according to U.S. Census data.
But next door, Maryland surpassed New Jersey as the wealthiest state in the nation, bringing in $69,300 per household.
D.C.’s household income increased by 2.8 percent to nearly $59,300. But so did its poverty rate, now 18.4 percent.
While economists attribute the gap partly to D.C.’s small population and changing demographics, it points to a trend in the region: the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.
That’s largely due to people with higher incomes moving into the District.
“The younger professionals are filling up condominiums up and down Massachusetts Avenue and 14th Street,” said Stephen Fuller, director of George Mason University’s Center for Regional Analysis. “It’s a continuing process.”
But, he said, that does not mean the poor are earning more money, as evidenced by the nearly 105,000 residents in households earning less than $22,000 for a family of four.
And many are very poor. According to the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, 61,000 people — 11 percent of all residents — live below half of the national poverty line, or just less than $11,000.
The District is one of six jurisdictions that has a poverty rate higher than 17 percent. It ranks behind Mississippi, Arkansas and Kentucky and above West Virginia and Alabama.
Maryland, buoyed by steady health care and education jobs, suffered less than a 1 percent drop in median income over 2008.
But Census data also says the state was one of three (along with Nebraska and New Hampshire) that showed an increasing inequality in the distribution of income.
“Maryland’s economies are becoming more polarized,” Fuller said. “There’s growth in [jobs that require] higher-[level] skills and higher education, and growth in low-end jobs. The middle is missing.”
Despite its high concentration of government jobs in the region, Virginia’s median household income fell by 2.8 percent to about $59,300, in line with the average drop nationwide of 2.9 percent.
The decrease is largely because the state’s economy, excluding Northern Virginia, is based in manufacturing, construction and retail — three sectors hit hard by the recession, economists said.
