Median Family Household Incomes by School

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

This is not right. We are at Wootton and are at $325,000.

Presumably there are a lot of retirees.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why would Northwood have a higher median income than Wheaton or Blair? I’m not sure the Northwood numbers are correct

Northwood’s attendance area contains Kemp Mill which has some pretty affluent folks (many who don’t attend public schools).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

This is not right. We are at Wootton and are at $325,000.

Presumably there are a lot of retirees.

They said that was their income.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

This is not right. We are at Wootton and are at $325,000.

Presumably there are a lot of retirees.

They said that was their income.

What do you mean?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is no way that’s correct

What seems off?

Way too low. Is this just from all the people who filed in the zone and then it says how many families at that school. I would guess that there are many, many families at Whitman that make in the high 6 figures. There's no way to extrapolate only the student families.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone changed their mind about anything based on this data? Did it inform you in any way of something you didn’t know?

For me, it was that the “rich schools” don’t have really ridiculous HHI.

I mean, I guess "ridiculous" is subjective, but you don't think it's wild that there are school districts where roughly half or more families make over $200K?

I think given the area that a HHI of $200K can be achieved by two very middle class people. Like two teachers or government workers. So I don’t think of a HHI of $200k as super rich or even rich.

I would have thought given the home prices in the Whitman catchment that it would be impossible to live there on less than $500k HHI, but maybe not? Or tho under $200K people are all retirees that have been there for decades.

I think this data is reminding us how bad people can be at estimating their own wealth as well as that of others. There are a lot of blue collar workers out there as well as people working in non profits, etc. who aren’t making the “professional” level income that so many people think is standard.

500k HHI is very unusual.

No, in Bethesda and Chevy Chase, it's not. In Wheaton, yes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is no way that’s correct

What seems off?

Way too low. Is this just from all the people who filed in the zone and then it says how many families at that school. I would guess that there are many, many families at Whitman that make in the high 6 figures. There's no way to extrapolate only the student families.

Basically, yes. There's no way to limit it to only student families. This is all families in the service area. Families include retirees.

I've been working on an updated version that just looks at families with kids under 18. I have some initial numbers there, but I've been trying to find ways to double-check them, particularly since some of the differences were surprising. Switching to families with kids under 18 required switching to pulling census numbers from tracts rather than data block groups. High school boundaries are big enough that tracts shouldn't be a problem. When the reported median is under $200k, there isn't much interpolation involved except for assuming a uniform distribution of incomes within each census-reported income bin. That's certainly not accurate, but isn't going to dramatically affect the data.

It has to model the incomes above $200k. I kept looking for a way to avoid it, even if it meant shifting a mean instead of a median, but the data isn't available at a granular enough level. There seems to be a lot of blocks where aggregate income numbers are withheld, which usually indicates someone very, very rich lives there. So, I'm much less confident in the over $200k medians, but they shouldn't be far off. Churchill's number is surprising. This suggests families with kids in the Churchill area have slightly lower incomes than families overall. I'm skeptical. This might be a byproduct of how this modeling works, but there's no particular reason it should do much worse with Churchill data.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is no way that’s correct

What seems off?

Way too low. Is this just from all the people who filed in the zone and then it says how many families at that school. I would guess that there are many, many families at Whitman that make in the high 6 figures. There's no way to extrapolate only the student families.

Basically, yes. There's no way to limit it to only student families. This is all families in the service area. Families include retirees.

I've been working on an updated version that just looks at families with kids under 18. I have some initial numbers there, but I've been trying to find ways to double-check them, particularly since some of the differences were surprising. Switching to families with kids under 18 required switching to pulling census numbers from tracts rather than data block groups. High school boundaries are big enough that tracts shouldn't be a problem. When the reported median is under $200k, there isn't much interpolation involved except for assuming a uniform distribution of incomes within each census-reported income bin. That's certainly not accurate, but isn't going to dramatically affect the data.

It has to model the incomes above $200k. I kept looking for a way to avoid it, even if it meant shifting a mean instead of a median, but the data isn't available at a granular enough level. There seems to be a lot of blocks where aggregate income numbers are withheld, which usually indicates someone very, very rich lives there. So, I'm much less confident in the over $200k medians, but they shouldn't be far off. Churchill's number is surprising. This suggests families with kids in the Churchill area have slightly lower incomes than families overall. I'm skeptical. This might be a byproduct of how this modeling works, but there's no particular reason it should do much worse with Churchill data.

Interesting but those still seem low.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is no way that’s correct

What seems off?

Way too low. Is this just from all the people who filed in the zone and then it says how many families at that school. I would guess that there are many, many families at Whitman that make in the high 6 figures. There's no way to extrapolate only the student families.

Basically, yes. There's no way to limit it to only student families. This is all families in the service area. Families include retirees.

I've been working on an updated version that just looks at families with kids under 18. I have some initial numbers there, but I've been trying to find ways to double-check them, particularly since some of the differences were surprising. Switching to families with kids under 18 required switching to pulling census numbers from tracts rather than data block groups. High school boundaries are big enough that tracts shouldn't be a problem. When the reported median is under $200k, there isn't much interpolation involved except for assuming a uniform distribution of incomes within each census-reported income bin. That's certainly not accurate, but isn't going to dramatically affect the data.

It has to model the incomes above $200k. I kept looking for a way to avoid it, even if it meant shifting a mean instead of a median, but the data isn't available at a granular enough level. There seems to be a lot of blocks where aggregate income numbers are withheld, which usually indicates someone very, very rich lives there. So, I'm much less confident in the over $200k medians, but they shouldn't be far off. Churchill's number is surprising. This suggests families with kids in the Churchill area have slightly lower incomes than families overall. I'm skeptical. This might be a byproduct of how this modeling works, but there's no particular reason it should do much worse with Churchill data.

Interesting but those still seem low.

Median, not average. If you drive around Bethesda, you'll spend so much time around the fancy houses that you'll forget about the apartments and condos. It skews perceptions of "normal".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is no way that’s correct

What seems off?

Way too low. Is this just from all the people who filed in the zone and then it says how many families at that school. I would guess that there are many, many families at Whitman that make in the high 6 figures. There's no way to extrapolate only the student families.

Basically, yes. There's no way to limit it to only student families. This is all families in the service area. Families include retirees.

I've been working on an updated version that just looks at families with kids under 18. I have some initial numbers there, but I've been trying to find ways to double-check them, particularly since some of the differences were surprising. Switching to families with kids under 18 required switching to pulling census numbers from tracts rather than data block groups. High school boundaries are big enough that tracts shouldn't be a problem. When the reported median is under $200k, there isn't much interpolation involved except for assuming a uniform distribution of incomes within each census-reported income bin. That's certainly not accurate, but isn't going to dramatically affect the data.

It has to model the incomes above $200k. I kept looking for a way to avoid it, even if it meant shifting a mean instead of a median, but the data isn't available at a granular enough level. There seems to be a lot of blocks where aggregate income numbers are withheld, which usually indicates someone very, very rich lives there. So, I'm much less confident in the over $200k medians, but they shouldn't be far off. Churchill's number is surprising. This suggests families with kids in the Churchill area have slightly lower incomes than families overall. I'm skeptical. This might be a byproduct of how this modeling works, but there's no particular reason it should do much worse with Churchill data.

Interesting but those still seem low.

Median, not average. If you drive around Bethesda, you'll spend so much time around the fancy houses that you'll forget about the apartments and condos. It skews perceptions of "normal".

Those apartments are pretty pricy too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why would Northwood have a higher median income than Wheaton or Blair? I’m not sure the Northwood numbers are correct

Not sure about Wheaton, but Blair's attendance zone has a lot more multi-family housing than Northwood's.

Northwood pulls in SCES which is low farms

[Anonymous]

Are these families that send their kids to the schools? If their kids go to private or homeschool are they included?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are these families that send their kids to the schools? If their kids go to private or homeschool are they included?

Homeschooled and private schools (and daycare/home) are included. This is census data for families with kids under 18.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do these look like pretty good estimates? I pulled MCPS GIS data for school boundaries and linked them to census blocks. Then I pulled median income bins for the block groups from ACS data, assigning them proportionally to the schools based on the household numbers by census block. Then it using the income bins to interpolate an overall median for the school.

Thank you for doing this, I'm glad someone is collecting the data.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is no way that’s correct

What seems off?

Way too low. Is this just from all the people who filed in the zone and then it says how many families at that school. I would guess that there are many, many families at Whitman that make in the high 6 figures. There's no way to extrapolate only the student families.

Basically, yes. There's no way to limit it to only student families. This is all families in the service area. Families include retirees.

I've been working on an updated version that just looks at families with kids under 18. I have some initial numbers there, but I've been trying to find ways to double-check them, particularly since some of the differences were surprising. Switching to families with kids under 18 required switching to pulling census numbers from tracts rather than data block groups. High school boundaries are big enough that tracts shouldn't be a problem. When the reported median is under $200k, there isn't much interpolation involved except for assuming a uniform distribution of incomes within each census-reported income bin. That's certainly not accurate, but isn't going to dramatically affect the data.

It has to model the incomes above $200k. I kept looking for a way to avoid it, even if it meant shifting a mean instead of a median, but the data isn't available at a granular enough level. There seems to be a lot of blocks where aggregate income numbers are withheld, which usually indicates someone very, very rich lives there. So, I'm much less confident in the over $200k medians, but they shouldn't be far off. Churchill's number is surprising. This suggests families with kids in the Churchill area have slightly lower incomes than families overall. I'm skeptical. This might be a byproduct of how this modeling works, but there's no particular reason it should do much worse with Churchill data.

Interesting but those still seem low.

Median, not average. If you drive around Bethesda, you'll spend so much time around the fancy houses that you'll forget about the apartments and condos. It skews perceptions of "normal".

We don’t drive a lot in Bethesda as we don’t live there. Those apartments except the subsidized are very expensive, more than our mortgage.