Here's Where Bartow County Ranks In Income

BARTOW COUNTY, GA — New numbers released by the U.S. Census Bureau show household incomes in Georgia trail the nation overall. The agency released its "2013-2017 American Community Survey Five-year Estimates" last week.

Overall, income has increased across the country, the numbers showed. The nation's median household income from 2013-17 was $57,652. That was up 8.7 percent from 2008 to 2012 when the median household took home $53,046. That number includes all households, including people who live alone.

The median household in Georgia earned $52,977 between 2013-17, according to the survey. That was up compared to the previous period, when households brought home $49,604. In Bartow County, the numbers are slightly lower, with the median household income between 2013 and 2017 clocking in at $52,393. That's higher than it was from 2008 to 2012, when it was $49,543.

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Virginia, which recently landed half of Amazon's second headquarters, was home to four of the five counties with the highest median earnings, including Loudoun County, where the median household brought home more than $129,000 a year between 2013-17.

Here are the top 10 highest earning counties in that period.

1. Loudoun County, Virginia — $129,588
2. Fairfax County, Virginia — $117,515
3. Howard County, Maryland — $115,576
4. Falls Church City, Virginia — $114,795
5. Douglas County, Colorado — $111,154
6. Hunterdon County, New Jersey — $110,969
7. Los Alamos County, New Mexico — $110,190
8. Morris County, New Jersey — $107,034
9. Fairfax city, Virginia — $106,870

Of note, median incomes increased in 16.6 percent of all counties, but 7.1 percent of counties saw incomes fall. A map provided by the Census Bureau showed many of the highest earners reside in the Northeast and the West. Some are scattered throughout Texas as well. Conversely, a large swath of households in the South earned less than $40,000 a year, lagging behind the nation.

Indeed, 33 of the lowest earning counties in America are located in the South. That includes Kentucky's McCreary County, located near the Tennessee border, which brought home less income than every other county in America from 2013-17 at $19,264 a year. McCreary residents actually earned more between 2008 and 2012, when the median household income was $21,785.

Patch national staffer Dan Hampton contributed to this report.

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