From Iowa to California, These Are the 5 Metro Areas With the Widest Income Gaps

The U.S.’s widest income divides stretch from California‘s major metropolitan areas to smaller communities in the Midwest and Southwest, with upper-income households collecting roughly nine to 10 times the median income of lower-income households in the five leading locations.

A Pew Research Center analysis of 204 U.S. metropolitan areas reveals that the largest proportional gap was outside the country’s biggest coastal cities. The findings also show why a region’s high incomes alone do not determine its position in an inequality ranking.

The analysis uses 2024 American Community Survey data. Pew assigned households to income tiers based on income adjusted for household size and local living costs, then compared the median incomes of upper- and lower-income groups. The findings cover metropolitan areas, which extend beyond individual city boundaries.

College Station–Bryan, Texas, took the fifth place after recording a median income of $276,135 among upper-income households, compared with $30,605 among lower-income households.

The difference was $245,530, with an upper-to-lower income ratio that rounds to 9.0. New York–Newark–Jersey City had the same rounded ratio, but calculations using Pew’s published income figures place College Station–Bryan slightly ahead.

California’s San Jose–Sunnyvale–Santa Clara metropolitan area came next. Its upper-income households had a median income of $327,196, while lower-income households recorded $34,822, producing a ratio of 9.4 to 1.

Among the five leading metros, San Jose had the highest median income for both groups. It also had the largest dollar difference between them, at $292,374. Yet its proportional divide remained smaller than those in the three locations ahead of it.

The neighboring San Francisco–Oakland–Fremont metropolitan area also recorded a rounded ratio of 9.4 to 1. Upper-income households had a median income of $299,690, compared with $31,780 among lower-income households.

That produced a difference of $267,910. San Francisco’s ratio was marginally higher than San Jose’s when calculated from the published dollar figures, illustrating how similar rounded results can conceal small differences.

Santa Fe, New Mexico, ranked second, with an upper-to-lower income ratio of 9.5 to 1. Median income reached $280,248 among upper-income households, compared with $29,462 among lower-income households.

The difference between those figures was $250,786. Santa Fe’s upper-income median was below those in both California metros, but its lower-income median was also smaller, resulting in a wider proportional divide.

The largest gap belonged to Iowa City, Iowa, where upper-income households had a median income of $239,321, compared with $24,606 among lower-income households. That translated to a ratio of 9.7 to 1. For every dollar in median income among the lower-income group, the upper-income group had approximately $9.70. The dollar difference between the two medians was $214,715.

Iowa City’s upper-income median was the smallest among these five metropolitan areas. Its lower-income median was also the smallest, helping explain why it led the ranking despite having a narrower dollar difference than the other four locations.

Nationally, upper-income households had 7.3 times the median income of lower-income households in 2024, up from 6.8 in 2001, according to Pew. Over that period, inflation-adjusted median income increased 25% among upper-income households, compared with 22% among middle-income households and 17% among lower-income households.

At the opposite end of the metropolitan comparison, Canton–Massillon, Ohio, had the narrowest ratio, at 5.7 to 1. Its upper-income households recorded a median income of approximately $235,000, compared with $41,200 among lower-income households.

The rankings measure differences in household income rather than accumulated wealth. They do not establish which industries, policies or demographic characteristics caused the gaps, nor do they show how income is distributed within each of the household groups.