State Plates
The District of Columbia Income Plate
In District of Columbia, income is where the atlas's population counts meet household economics. This plate places Black District of Columbia in the national income geography: the benchmarks below are the published national figures for Black households, and District of Columbia's own distribution figures — 310,000 Black residents, 41 percent of the state — give the scale of the community those national patterns describe within the state's borders.
The National Pattern
In the District of Columbia, 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. Against the national midpoint, the rows below say how District of Columbia's households stand.
For the District of Columbia, the national benchmark is a yardstick, not a description; the description is the state's own distribution, tabled 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. Two sides frame the comparison here: the national midpoint, and the households of District of Columbia.
The income figures take their local meaning in the District of Columbia, 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. The benchmark's work is location, not rank: it fixes where District of Columbia stands so the plate can be read.
Reading This Plate
How to read this plate: the state rows are the published census figures for District of Columbia; the benchmark rows are the published national figures, labeled as benchmarks. In District of Columbia, 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 the District of Columbia, where the table's state rows set the population this benchmark describes. Washington holds about 310,000 Black residents — Black alone or in combination — nearly half of its people, with Black alone at about 282,000, or 41 percent. The general record is background; the local one — District of Columbia's, in the table — is the subject.
The income figures take their local meaning in the District of Columbia, where the table's state rows set the population this benchmark describes. This is one of the highest-income jurisdictions in the federal tables and one of its most divided: a large professional class anchored by the federal government, Howard University, and the hospital and university corridor stands across a wide income gap from the service workforce east of the river — the same east-west line the distribution plate draws. The table states District of Columbia's record plainly; the general record matters only as it sharpens that statement.
Residents moving between states — domestic migration — are the stream that built and rebuilt Black geographies across a century and a half, District of Columbia'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 District of Columbia's 310,000 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 District of Columbia as for every entry.
An atlas is patient with its subjects. In District of Columbia, 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 District of Columbia, 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 District of Columbia Income plate is one page of it.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black share of the state population (alone) | 41% |
| Black share, alone or in combination | 45% |
| Black residents, alone or in combination | 310,000 |
| 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.