economy
Median household income
Why this matters
Median household income is the income earned by a household right in the middle of the pack: half of households earn more, and half earn less. Unlike an average, it isn’t thrown off by a handful of the highest earners, so it gives a fair picture of how a typical family is doing.
Income shapes nearly every part of daily life: whether a family can cover rent, afford healthy food, handle a car repair, or save for the future. When typical incomes rise faster than the cost of living, families gain breathing room. When they stall, even working households can struggle.
Comparing median income across neighborhoods and counties helps show where good-paying work is within reach and where it is harder to get ahead.
Income tells only part of the story; whether children can climb beyond their parents’ income is Charlotte’s defining question. A landmark mobility study found a Charlotte child from the bottom income fifth had a 4.4% chance of reaching the top — versus 12.9% in San Jose and 10.8% in Salt Lake City. The Opportunity Atlas lets you trace these patterns down to the neighborhood.
About the Charlotte region
This explorer covers the 14-county, two-state Charlotte region (11 North Carolina and 3 South Carolina counties). Many of these indicators connect to a defining regional story: a landmark Harvard study ranked Charlotte last, 50th of the 50 largest U.S. metros for economic mobility (a child raised in the poorest fifth had about a 4.4% chance of reaching the top fifth), a finding that launched the region's Leading on Opportunity agenda. Updated 2024 data show Charlotte has since climbed to 38th.
Opportunity here is also unevenly mapped. An affluent “wedge” fanning southeast from uptown holds a large majority of the city's wealth on under a quarter of its land, while a ”crescent” to the north, west, and east carries higher poverty, a legacy of redlining, exclusionary zoning, and highway routing that recurs across the race, income, health, tree-canopy, and school maps in this tool. No single indicator is good or bad on its own; together they describe how the region sorted opportunity.
Companion resources: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Quality of Life Explorer · UNC Charlotte Urban Institute · Opportunity Atlas · Methods & sources
Learn more
- U.S. Census Bureau — Income in the United States: 2024 census.gov
The latest national report on household income, with the official median and trends.
- U.S. Census Bureau — About Income census.gov
Explains how the Census defines and measures money income.
- The Opportunity Atlas opportunityatlas.org
Interactive maps of children’s adult earnings by the neighborhood where they grew up.
About the data
Calculated from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates (2014–2024), at the Census-tract level, with margins of error. ACS 5-year vintages overlap year to year, so the series is a rolling estimate; compare only non-overlapping periods.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates.