State Plates
The Louisiana Income Plate
In Louisiana, income is where the atlas's population counts meet household economics. This plate places Black Louisiana in the national income geography: the benchmarks below are the published national figures for Black households, and Louisiana's own distribution figures — 1.55 million Black residents, 33 percent of the state — give the scale of the community those national patterns describe within the state's borders.
The National Pattern
For Louisiana, the national benchmark is a yardstick, not a description; the description is the state's own distribution, tabled 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. Two sides frame the comparison here: the national midpoint, and the households of Louisiana.
In Louisiana, 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. Held against the national midpoint, Louisiana's own rows say how its households stand.
In Louisiana, 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. Against the national midpoint, the rows below say how Louisiana's households stand.
Reading This Plate
How to read this plate: the state rows are the published census figures for Louisiana; the benchmark rows are the published national figures, labeled as benchmarks. In Louisiana, 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
For Louisiana, the national benchmark is a yardstick, not a description; the description is the state's own distribution, tabled below. Louisiana holds about 1.55 million Black residents — Black alone or in combination — nearly one in three of its people, with Black alone at about 1.46 million, or 31 percent. The rows tabled below are Louisiana's, and they are what make the general material local.
The income figures take their local meaning in Louisiana, where the table's state rows set the population this benchmark describes. The state's Black geography divides into three regions. The general record is background; the local one — Louisiana's, in the table — is the subject.
Residents moving between states — domestic migration — are the stream that built and rebuilt Black geographies across a century and a half, Louisiana'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 Louisiana's 1.55 million 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 Louisiana as for every entry.
For The Louisiana Income Plate, the method is the atlas's own: named sources, published figures, and a table that carries what the map cannot. A note on this plate's figures, stated once and plainly: Black share of the state population (alone): 33%; Black share, alone or in combination: 33.2%; Black residents, alone or in combination: 1.55 Million. Read for Louisiana, the figures are the argument; the text only keeps them in order.
Two further figures complete the plate's account of Louisiana: Black residents, alone or in combination: 1.55 Million; United States benchmark — Black median household income, Census Bureau annual report: $56,490. In Louisiana, stated together with the measures above, they fix the population this plate describes — its size, its share, and its standing against the national record — and they are the figures the surrounding text interprets, neither rounded further nor carried beyond what the source publishes.
What follows is the plate the atlas files as The Louisiana Income Plate. Its table records Black share of the state population (alone): 33%; Black share, alone or in combination: 33.2%. In Louisiana, read with its table, the plate states the record and lets the record speak.
The figures carried in this plate's table stand as its summary: Black share of the state population (alone): 33%; Black share, alone or in combination: 33.2%; Black residents, alone or in combination: 1.55 Million. Two kinds of firms fill the federal business counts: employer firms with payrolls, and nonemployer firms — the sole proprietors who are most of Black business by number, in Louisiana as nationally.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black share of the state population (alone) | 33% |
| Black share, alone or in combination | 33.2% |
| Black residents, alone or in combination | 1.55 Million |
| 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.