State Plates
The Michigan Income Plate
In Michigan, income is where the atlas's population counts meet household economics. This plate places Black Michigan in the national income geography: the benchmarks below are the published national figures for Black households, and Michigan's own distribution figures — 1.55 million Black residents, 14 percent of the state — give the scale of the community those national patterns describe within the state's borders.
The National Pattern
For Michigan, 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. The plate sets the national midpoint beside Michigan's households and invites the two-sided reading.
In Michigan, 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. Michigan's rows, read against the national midpoint, state the standing of its households.
For Michigan, the national benchmark is a yardstick, not a description; the description is the state's own distribution, tabled 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. On one side the national midpoint, on the other the households of Michigan — that is the comparison this plate invites.
Reading This Plate
How to read this plate: the state rows are the published census figures for Michigan; the benchmark rows are the published national figures, labeled as benchmarks. In Michigan, 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 Michigan, that national income pattern is read against the state's own households, whose published share and count stand in the table below. Michigan holds about 1.55 million Black residents — Black alone or in combination — nearly one in six of its people, with Black alone at about 1.36 million, or 13.6 percent. The table is where the general pattern becomes Michigan's own figures.
In Michigan, that national income pattern is read against the state's own households, whose published share and count stand in the table below. The Upper Peninsula and the northern Lower Peninsula record Black shares under 1 percent in most counties — among the smallest in the Midwest. Michigan's rows, read against the national ladder, state where its attainment stands.
Residents moving between states — domestic migration — are the stream that built and rebuilt Black geographies across a century and a half, Michigan'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 Michigan'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 Michigan as for every entry.
An atlas is patient with its subjects. In Michigan, 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. In Michigan, what does not change between releases is the structure this plate records: a counted population in Michigan, 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 Michigan Income plate is one page of it.
The subject here is The Michigan Income Plate, and the reading is the atlas's standard one: the published figures first, the interpretation after. A note on this plate's figures, stated once and plainly: Black share of the state population (alone): 14%; Black share, alone or in combination: 15.5%; Black residents, alone or in combination: 1.55 Million. For Michigan, a reader who holds the table and this text together has the plate entire.
In Michigan, the record behind this plate of Michigan is published, not estimated by this atlas: U.S. Census Bureau, Income in the United States (Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplement); American Community Survey. The table's benchmark row for Michigan states its basis in its label — the comparison rests on the same measure on the same basis.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black share of the state population (alone) | 14% |
| Black share, alone or in combination | 15.5% |
| 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.