State Plates
The Pennsylvania Income Plate
In Pennsylvania, income is where the atlas's population counts meet household economics. This plate places Black Pennsylvania in the national income geography: the benchmarks below are the published national figures for Black households, and Pennsylvania's own distribution figures — 1.66 million Black residents, 11 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 Pennsylvania, 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. An atlas benchmark earns its place by locating Pennsylvania, never by ranking it.
For Pennsylvania, 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. The comparison the plate invites is therefore two-sided: the national midpoint on one side, Pennsylvania's households on the other.
The income figures take their local meaning in Pennsylvania, 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. Locating Pennsylvania is the benchmark's purpose; ranking it is not.
Reading This Plate
How to read this plate: the state rows are the published census figures for Pennsylvania; the benchmark rows are the published national figures, labeled as benchmarks. In Pennsylvania, 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 Pennsylvania, that national income pattern is read against the state's own households, whose published share and count stand in the table below. Pennsylvania holds about 1.66 million Black residents — Black alone or in combination — roughly one in eight of its people, with Black alone at about 1.42 million, or 11 percent. Read against the table, the broad pattern settles into the specific numbers that belong to Pennsylvania.
For Pennsylvania, the national benchmark is a yardstick, not a description; the description is the state's own distribution, tabled below. Cheyney University, founded in 1837 as the Institute for Colored Youth, is the oldest historically Black institution in the United States; Lincoln University, founded in 1854, was the first degree-granting HBCU and educated a generation of African and Caribbean independence-era leaders alongside its American alumni. On one side the national ladder, on the other Pennsylvania's attainment — that is the comparison this plate invites.
Residents moving between states — domestic migration — are the stream that built and rebuilt Black geographies across a century and a half, Pennsylvania'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 Pennsylvania's 1.66 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 Pennsylvania as for every entry.
An atlas is patient with its subjects. In Pennsylvania, 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 Pennsylvania, what does not change between releases is the structure this plate records: a counted population in Pennsylvania, 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 Pennsylvania Income plate is one page of it.
This plate takes up its subject directly: The Pennsylvania Income Plate. A note on this plate's figures, stated once and plainly: Black share of the state population (alone): 11%; Black share, alone or in combination: 12.8%; Black residents, alone or in combination: 1.66 Million. In Pennsylvania, read with its table, the plate states the record and lets the record speak.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black share of the state population (alone) | 11% |
| Black share, alone or in combination | 12.8% |
| Black residents, alone or in combination | 1.66 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.