Want to be in the 1%? You need to make more than $1 million a year to pull it off in D.C.
What's happening: If the District were a state, it would rank no. 1 in the nation for how much you need to earn to make the 1%, according to an analysis of IRS tax filer data from SmartAsset.
- In Maryland, $633,333 is the income threshold.
- In Virginia, it's $643,848. That's actually slightly less than the national average of $652,657.
⚡ The District's threshold of $1,013,698 is higher than Connecticut, which leads states at $952,902.
🧠 Be smart: The median household income in D.C. is $90,000, per census data. In the city, 16.5% of people live below the poverty line.
- Much of the wealth in Maryland is concentrated around the Beltway. The median income in Montgomery County is $113,000, and in Prince George's County it's $90,000.
- Unsurprisingly, nearly all of the richest people in Virginia live in NoVa, Axios' Karri Peifer writes.
State of play: After Connecticut, here are the next five states where the threshold to make the 1% is the highest:
- Massachusetts: $903,401
- California: $844,266
- New Jersey: $817,346
- Washington: $804,853
- New York: $776,662
The big picture: The top 1% of U.S. families had more than one-third of the total wealth in the U.S. in 2019. That's up from 27% in 1989, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

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