State Plates
The Indiana Income Plate
In Indiana, income is where the atlas's population counts meet household economics. This plate places Black Indiana in the national income geography: the benchmarks below are the published national figures for Black households, and Indiana's own distribution figures — 750,000 Black residents, 10 percent of the state — give the scale of the community those national patterns describe within the state's borders.
The National Pattern
The income figures take their local meaning in Indiana, where the table's state rows set the population this benchmark describes. 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. Locating Indiana is the benchmark's purpose; ranking it is not.
The income figures take their local meaning in Indiana, where the table's state rows set the population this benchmark describes. 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. The point of the benchmark is position: where Indiana stands, stated before anything is made of it.
In Indiana, that national income pattern is read against the state's own households, whose published share and count stand in the table below. 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. Held against the national midpoint, Indiana's own rows say how its households stand.
Reading This Plate
How to read this plate: the state rows are the published census figures for Indiana; the benchmark rows are the published national figures, labeled as benchmarks. In Indiana, 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
In Indiana, that national income pattern is read against the state's own households, whose published share and count stand in the table below. Indiana holds about 750,000 Black residents — Black alone or in combination — roughly one in nine of its people, with Black alone at about 648,000, or 9.6 percent. Read against the table, the broad pattern settles into the specific numbers that belong to Indiana.
The income figures take their local meaning in Indiana, where the table's state rows set the population this benchmark describes. On this plate — the plate for Indiana — fort Wayne, the state's second city, is roughly a sixth Black, with a community built on the harvester and electrical industries. For Indiana, read with the table, the general pattern and the local figures correct each other.
Residents moving between states — domestic migration — are the stream that built and rebuilt Black geographies across a century and a half, Indiana'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 Indiana's 750,000 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 Indiana as for every entry.
An atlas is patient with its subjects. In Indiana, 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 Indiana, 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 Indiana Income plate is one page of it.
Filed in this series as The Indiana 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): 10%; Black share, alone or in combination: 11%; Black residents, alone or in combination: 750,000. The plate reports what the sources publish for Indiana and leaves alone what they do not.
This plate takes up its subject directly: The Indiana Income Plate. How this plate is read, for Indiana: begin with the map, whose shading bands the published Black share into the legend's five classes, then turn to the table, which states the measures in figures — Black share of the state population (alone): 10%; Black share, alone or in combination: 11%. In Indiana, a reader who holds the table and this text together has the plate entire.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black share of the state population (alone) | 10% |
| Black share, alone or in combination | 11% |
| Black residents, alone or in combination | 750,000 |
| 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.