Depending on where you live, being in the top 1% can mean very different things.
In West Virginia, you can join the top 1% with pre-tax income of about $420,000. In California or Connecticut, by contrast, you’d need a seven-figure salary.
Those figures come from a recent analysis by SmartAsset, the financial technology company. The report found a wide range of incomes to qualify for the top 1% in different states in 2024.
The report is one of several to examine the upper reaches of American earnings in an era shaped by inflation and a pandemic. Median household income rose nearly 20% to $80,610 between 2020 and 2023, according to federal data.
In separate analyses, both published this summer, SmartAsset and the personal finance site GOBankingRates ranked states according to the pre-tax income required to qualify for the top 1% in each one.
In these states, the top 1% are all millionaires
Here are the five wealthiest states, in terms of the minimum salary you would need to crack the top 1%. We’ll use SmartAsset’s numbers, which are fairly similar to the ones from GOBankingRates.
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Connecticut: $1.15 million minimum income for the top 1%
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Massachusetts: $1.11 million minimum income
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California: $1.04 million
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Washington State: $990,000
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New Jersey: $976,000
And here are the five states where the lowest income puts you in the top 1%:
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West Virginia: $420,000 income floor for Top 1%
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Mississippi: $441,000 minimum income
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New Mexico: $476,000
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Kentucky: $514,000
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Arkansas: $532,000
'What does it mean to be rich?'
Some of the states with the highest top incomes, including California and New York, host large numbers of Fortune 500 companies.
"There's either lifestyle or business opportunities in all of these places," said Jaclyn DeJohn, director of economic analysis at SmartAsset.
DeJohn noted, too, that three of the 10 states with the highest incomes do not levy income tax: Florida, Washington and Wyoming.
"On average, you're probably saving 6 or 7% of your income every year on that factor alone," she said.
Incomes and local costs of living may partly explain how Americans decide where to live. The five wealthiest states, in terms of top income, all lost population to other states in domestic migration between 2020 and 2023, Census figures show. Three of the lowest-income states, Arkansas, Kentucky and West Virginia, gained population from migration in those years. (New Mexico and Mississippi experienced small net losses.)
“The question is, What does it mean to be rich?” said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning thinktank. “Does it mean you have more money than other people, or does it mean you have a higher standard of living? Is it a measure of how comfortable you can live, or is it a measure of how well you do relative to other people?”