State Plates
The Arkansas Income Plate
In Arkansas, income is where the atlas's population counts meet household economics. This plate places Black Arkansas in the national income geography: the benchmarks below are the published national figures for Black households, and Arkansas's own distribution figures — 490,000 Black residents, 15 percent of the state — give the scale of the community those national patterns describe within the state's borders.
The National Pattern
In Arkansas, that national income pattern is read against the state's own households, whose published share and count stand in the table below. Median household income is the most widely used single measure of a population's economic position, and for Black households in the United States the Census Bureau's annual income report places the figure at $56,490. The midpoint is the reference; Arkansas's own rows give the standing of its households.
In Arkansas, that national income pattern is read against the state's own households, whose published share and count stand in the table below. Household income counts the combined money income of everyone aged 15 and over living in the home — wages, salaries, self-employment income, Social Security, pensions, interest, and cash benefits — before taxes. How Arkansas's households stand is said by its own rows, held against the national midpoint.
The income figures take their local meaning in Arkansas, where the table's state rows set the population this benchmark describes. The national median household income in the same report is $77,719. Against that benchmark, the Black median of $56,490 is about 73 cents on the dollar. In an atlas a benchmark answers one question — where does Arkansas stand — and leaves ranking aside.
Reading This Plate
How to read this plate: the state rows are the published census figures for Arkansas; the benchmark rows are the published national figures, labeled as benchmarks. In Arkansas, the plate makes no state income estimate of its own — it sets the state's population, counted exactly, beside the national income record, measured exactly, which is the honest first step of any income geography.
The Population Behind the Plate
The income figures take their local meaning in Arkansas, where the table's state rows set the population this benchmark describes. Arkansas holds about 490,000 Black residents — Black alone or in combination — roughly one in six of its people, with Black alone at about 453,000, or 15 percent. That is the benchmark's use: Arkansas is located by it, not ranked by it.
In Arkansas, that national income pattern is read against the state's own households, whose published share and count stand in the table below. The eastern tier of counties along the Mississippi — Chicot, Desha, Phillips, Lee, St. Held against the national midpoint, the state's own rows say how its households stand.
Residents moving between states — domestic migration — are the stream that built and rebuilt Black geographies across a century and a half, Arkansas's among them. Read against the population counted on the distribution plate, the national median describes the economic center of gravity of the community that Arkansas's 490,000 Black residents belong to. Holding the structure still while the numbers move is the gazetteer's work — the only way an atlas stays honest across editions, for Arkansas as for every entry.
An atlas is patient with its subjects. In Arkansas, the income geography of Black America changes at the speed of households — of graduations, hires, diagnoses, incorporations, and moves — and the federal surveys that measure it publish on their own calendars. What does not change between releases is the structure this plate records: a counted population in Arkansas, a measured national pattern, and the standing invitation to read the two together, state by state, until the whole country has been read that way. That is the work of this section of the atlas, and the Arkansas Income plate is one page of it.
Filed in this series as The Arkansas Income Plate, the plate below states the published record for its subject and reads it closely. A note on this plate's figures, stated once and plainly: Black share of the state population (alone): 15%; Black share, alone or in combination: 16.3%; Black residents, alone or in combination: 490,000. The material is asked only for what it can state, and nothing beyond it is claimed for Arkansas.
The subject here is The Arkansas Income Plate, and the reading is the atlas's standard one: the published figures first, the interpretation after. Its table records Black share of the state population (alone): 15%; Black share, alone or in combination: 16.3%. On this plate the argument is the figures — the text merely keeps them in sequence.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black share of the state population (alone) | 15% |
| Black share, alone or in combination | 16.3% |
| Black residents, alone or in combination | 490,000 |
| United States benchmark — Black median household income, Census Bureau annual report | $56,490 |
| United States benchmark — Black median household income per $1 of the national median | 73 Cents |
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Income in the United States (Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplement); American Community Survey. Method: Figures are drawn from the published federal sources named on this page, for the geography named; tile shading bands the published Black population share into the five legend classes. Counts are rounded as published by the source agency, and national benchmark rows are labeled with the basis they are published on.