Well, sort of. The OC Register published a chart with financial information on every ZIP code in Orange County (plus some extra ones the IRS uses because they are apparently tied to P.O. boxes). The list includes average income (we're assuming per household), charity donations and taxes as a percent of income.
Be sure to also click on the "details" link on the right of each city for a more complete breakdown, including income compared with the previous year. Disclaimer: The data is only as recent as the 2005 tax year.
However, we see this as being a potentially very interesting document, since 2005 was a year of good prosperity locally (think finance and real estate) and the housing bubble was still in full swing.
What do you think will happen when 2005 incomes are compared someday to 2006 and 2007 incomes, which would be the years leading up to our current/impending/possible recession - when that information is finally available?
Some quick-hit observations relating to South Orange County cities:
- The highest average income ZIP code was Laguna Beach (92651), with an average of $205,514.54. The lowest was Laguna Woods (92637) at $46,740.71. Neither is surprising in the least.
Other top income-earning areas: Trabuco Canyon (92679): $166,016.54; San Juan (92693): $120,910.86; San Clemente (92673): $113,793.17; Laguna Hills (92653): $113,668.73. - In an era where incomes seemed to commonly be expanding by leaps and bounds (for instance, Aliso Viejo's average increased 11.05%), it wasn't the case in all areas. For example, Laguna Niguel (92677) only increased 1.37% and Lake Forest (92630) went up only 2.59%.
- Dana Point (92629) was a big income gainer - its average increased 15.68% in one year.
- San Juan Capistrano's (ZIP 92675) average income actually dropped 8.14% between 2004 and 2005.
2 comments:
I'd like to know how can a person's income increase 16% in a year. If I recall correctly, in 2004, average HH income in Laguna Beach was $100k. So, it doubled in a year? How can this be?
These numbers are the means of a distribution. So population shifted. But means are notoriously easy to bias by outliers (i.e. Kobe Bryant moves down the street and suddenly the zip code looks a lot richer). The median is a more stable statistic for this kind of data.
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