US Metro Areas ranked by Per Capita Income, Florida Rising. (purchasing, median income)

[18Montclair]

Impressive showing by some smaller Floridian Metros. Perhaps the influx of wealthy retirees is finally manifesting itself in the stats.

Anyway,
Top 20 US Metro Areas ranked by Per Capita Income, 2007
1 Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, CT $80,192
2 Naples-Marco Island, FL $61,788
3 San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA $61,337
4 San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA $58,716
5 Sebastian-Vero Beach, FL $58,144
6 Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-MD-VA-WV $54,211
7 Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH $53,763
8 New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA $53,423
9 Boulder, CO $52,438
10 Trenton-Ewing, NJ $52,388
11 Midland, TX $52,294
12 Napa, CA $50,817
13 Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA $48,499
14 Bradenton-Sarasota-Venice, FL $48,498
15 Barnstable Town, MA $48,468
16 Santa Cruz-Watsonville, CA $47,923
17 Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, CT $47,641
18 Casper, WY $47,354
19 Reno-Sparks, NV $46,734
20 Minneapolis-St Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI $46,458

Other places
21 Denver-Aurora, CO $46,439
22 Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX $46,235
26 Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD $45,460
34 Chicago-Naperville-Joliet, IL-IN-WI $43,714
37 Miami-Ft Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL $43,001
42 Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA $41,875
43 Dallas-Ft Worth-Arlington, TX $41,813
62 Detroit-Warren-Livonia, MI $39,419
94 Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA $37,294
140 Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ $35,010

http://bea.gov/newsreleases/regional...df/mpi0808.pdf

[WILWRadio]

Barnstable? That's a small town on Cape Cod. Me thinks this study is flawed.

[Minnehahapolitan]

...That retiree influx is obivously working better for Florida than Phoenix.

[rxnasi]

if a town is small it dosent mean it is poor i know a lot of small rich town

[STLCardsBlues1989]

Is cost of living taken into account?

[WILWRadio]

Originally Posted by rxnasi

if a town is small it dosent mean it is poor i know a lot of small rich town

But if you look at the name of the list it is Metropolitan areas that are being rated, not towns. If they were rating towns Barnstable would not be on the list. My own hometown in Connecticut, a suburb of Hartford has a median income of about $100,000 and would probably not even rate since there are probably hundreds of cities and towns that have a higher per capita median income. Barnstable is not even part of the Boston metro area let alone a metropolitan area unto itself.

[lammius]

There is a MSA centered on Barnstable Town. Barnstable Town, MA MSA. It includes all of Barnstable County.

[WILWRadio]

Originally Posted by lammius

There is a MSA centered on Barnstable Town. Barnstable Town, MA MSA. It includes all of Barnstable County.

Amazing. That's news to me. They must now consider a portion of the lower Cape to be an MSA.

[Duderino]

The usual suspects. It would be interesting to rate metro areas' per capita income and then normalize the data according to purchasing power. I'd be willing to bet metro areas such as SF, NY, and DC would be closer to bottom.

[John Shaft]

Originally Posted by Duderino

The usual suspects. It would be interesting to rate metro areas' per capita income and then normalize the data according to purchasing power. I'd be willing to bet metro areas such as SF, NY, and DC would be closer to bottom.

I remember seeing something like this relatively recently on one of Forbes' slideshow top 10 lists for young professionals, or some such. It was divided by career field (in other words there were 15+ slideshows for different fields). In each one, LA, SF, and NYC were near the VERY bottom in terms of income to cost of living. Probably a better way to illustrate the lifestyle someone could afford in any given city.