How much money you need to be among Georgia's 1%
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You can have the West Paces Ferry address, Augusta National membership and the Sea Island beach house. To officially join the state's top 1% of earners, you'll need to pull in nearly $600,000.
Driving the news: Georgians who earn $585,397 or more are considered part of the state's 1%, according to a new SmartAsset analysis of IRS tax filer data.
- That's lower than the national average of $652,657.
State of play: Southern states have some of the country's lowest income thresholds for their top 1%.
- Florida and Virginia are exceptions, ranking 8th and 12th in the nation for how much their residents have to make, respectively. Georgia ranks 21st.
Be smart: The median household income in Georgia is $66,559, U.S. Census data shows.
- It's $77,589 in metro Atlanta and $74,107 in the city proper, where the gap between the haves and have-nots is one of the largest in the United States.
- The metro region is also home — at least some of the year — to many of Georgia's billionaires.
Zoom out: You have to be rich rich — making more than $952,902 — to be considered the 1% in Connecticut, where the income threshold is the highest of any state.
- Washington, D.C., where people in the top 1% make more than $1 million, would take first place if it were a state.
The big picture: The top 1% of U.S. families held more than a third of the country's total wealth in 2019, up from 27% in 1989, the Congressional Budget Office reported last year.
- Households in the bottom half of the distribution held only 2% of the country's wealth.