How much money you need to earn per year to be rich in each US state

Being “rich” — or in the top 10% of household earners in the US — looks very different depending on your state.Earning $200,000 a year in the state with the lowest threshold — West Virginia — means you are living large, according to a report from Visual Capitalist.Meanwhile, earning that same amount in Washington, DC — the area with the highest threshold — might mean you can barely pay your bills.In general, a household needs to earn between $198,000 and $387,000 in annual income to be considered among the top 10% earners.But the District of Columbia is an anomaly: To be considered rich here, you’d need to earn a whopping $635,000 yearly.The top 10 states and DC where it takes the most money to be considered wealthy are, in order, the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Washington, New York, Hawaii, Alaska, California, and Maryland (tied) and Rhode Island (tied).Visual Capitalist used information from Germany-based tax platform BuchhaltungsButler and the Berlin-based data studio DataPulse Research, which crunched gross (pre-tax) household income numbers from the United States Census Bureau across all 50 states and the District of Columbia.“Affordability differences are especially clear at the state level,” says Hannah Jones, senior economic research analyst at Realtor.com.

“In the nation’s most expensive housing markets, Hawaii, New York, California, and Massachusetts, a $200,000 income would make only about 50% to 55% of homes affordable.“The Northeast, in particular, continues to see strong housing demand driven by several major economic hubs,” explains Jones.“Yet inventory has struggled to keep pace, largely due to years of limited new construction.

As a result, home prices in the Northeast remain elevated compared with most other regions.”“High income does not equal high buying power in luxury coastal Connecticut,” says Evangela Brock of Douglas Elliman, who’s based in Gr...