The District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Washington State appeared to have the highest incomes on average, according to new research based on tax information.
Syracuse University's Transactional Records Clearinghouse
The lowest AGI in the country, at only half that of the top three states, was Mississippi at $50,876. West Virginia had the second lowest income at $53,461, while New Mexico returns reported an average AGI of $56,383, the third lowest.
The TRAC research also looked at the average number of dependents reported on federal income tax returns, which fell to 1.83 in 2021. The figure has been slowly declining over the past decade, down from an average of 2.01 dependents reported on returns filed in 2011.
However, there's a great deal of variation in these numbers across different counties. Reported averages varied from a high of 2.5 in Loving County, Texas and 2.44 in Morgan County, Utah to a low of 1.43 in Forest County, Pennsylvania and 1.48 in Manhattan, New York.
Urban counties in the Northeast and along the coasts tended to report fewer dependents in families, though many rural counties across the U.S. also reported an average of fewer than 2.0 dependents.
